Concentrated dispersions and melts from block-copolymer micelles: Computer simulation

Abstract

A technique for simulation of concentrated solutions and melts of spherical micelles composed of diblock copolymers is presented; the degrees of polymerization of blocks are 20 and 80, respectively. The concentration of solutions is varied in a wide range up to 67 vol %, which corresponds to the dense packing of spheres in the volume-centered lattice. It is shown that, at all the values of the Flory–Huggins parameter, such inverted phases are instable and fairly rapidly transformed into more equilibrated phases without any long-range order.