title: Simulated annealing study of morphological transitions of diblock copolymers in solution.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials for Adsorption and Separation, College of Chemistry and Department of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China.
authors.forename: Pingchuan
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Yuhua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.forename: Baohui
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Tiehong
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Qinghua
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: Datong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.forename: An-Chang
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Shi