Theory of the Lamellar Superstructure of an ABC 3-Miktoarm Star-Terpolymer

✍ Scribed by Tatiana M. Birshtein; Alexey A. Polotsky; Volker Abetz

• Book ID: 102494135
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 324 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1022-1344
• DOI: 10.1002/mats.200400024

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Summary: The theory of lamellar superstructures of an ABC 3‐miktoarm star terpolymer in the conditions corresponding to the strong segregation limit for linear ABC triblock terpolymer has been developed. According to the particular molecular topology (namely, the common junction point for all three blocks), the system cannot avoid volume interactions between monomers of different blocks even in this limit. Hence, in the lamellar superstructure, there exists the so‐called “mixed” domain containing monomers of all three blocks but formed mainly of the block with the lowest degree of incompatibility. It is shown that unfavorable volume interactions in this domain are minimized by the increase of the interfacial area per ABC molecule which makes the mixed domain narrow. This leads to an unusual behavior of the period of the superstructure which decreases with an increase in the length of the block with the lowest incompatibility. However, in the case of a “synchronous” increase in the size of the branches of the ABC 3‐miktoarm star terpolymer, the period of the superstructure increases similarly to that for a linear ABC triblock terpolymer.

ABC 3‐miktoarm star terpolymer.

imageABC 3‐miktoarm star terpolymer.