Simulated annealing study of morphological transitions of diblock copolymers in solution.
The simulated annealing method was applied to study the self-assembling process of diblock copolymers in selective solvents for one block. The simulation results illustrated that the morphologies of the copolymer aggregates strongly depend on the interactions between the core-forming blocks and the solvents and on the length of the corona-forming blocks. Multiple morphological transitions were observed in one system. The transition sequence (disordered state-spherical micelles-short rodlike micelles-long rodlike micelles-onionlike aggregates) was observed for copolymers with increasing core-solvent interaction. Similar transitions were observed with the decrease of the length of the corona-forming blocks. The mechanisms of these transitions are investigated. The simulation results are compared with experiments and other simulations.
Sun
Pingchuan
P
Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials for Adsorption and Separation, College of Chemistry and Department of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China.
Yin
Yuhua
Y
Li
Baohui
B
Chen
Tiehong
T
Jin
Qinghua
Q
Ding
Datong
D
Shi
An-Chang
AC