Abstract

We report on a ternary isothermal system consisting of a poly(ethylene oxide)/poly(propylene oxide) (PEO/PPO) amphiphilic block copolymer, “water”, and “oil” (where “water” and “oil” are selective solvents for the different blocks), which exhibits the richest structural polymorphism ever observed (in equilibrium) in mixtures containing amphiphiles (such as block copolymers, surfactants, or lipids). The microstructure resulting from the self-assembly of the PEO/PPO block copolymer can vary from normal (oil-in-water) micelles in solution, through all types of normal and reverse (water-in-oil) lyotropic liquid crystals (normal micellar cubic, normal hexagonal, normal bicontinuous cubic, lamellar, reverse bicontinuous cubic, reverse hexagonal, reverse micellar cubic), to reverse micelles, as the relative volume fraction of the apolar (“oil”-like) components increases over that of the polar (“water”-like) components. The structure in the liquid crystalline phases has been established with small-angle X-ray sca...

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