SANS and SAXS study of block copolymer/homopolymer mixtures

Abstract

The lateral and vertical components of the radius of gyration for a single block copolymer chain and those of a single homopolymer chain in the lamellar microdomain space formed by a mixture of diblock copolymers and homopolymers were investigated by means of small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) and the microdomain structures by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). The homopolymers whose molecular weights are much smaller than that of the corresponding chains of the block copolymers were used so that the homopolymers were uniformly solubilized in the corresponding microdomains. The SANS result suggests that the homopolymer chains in the microdomain space as well as the block copolymer chains are more compressed in the direction parallel to the interface and more stretched in the direction perpendicular to the interface than the corresponding unperturbed polymer chains with the same molecular weight. On increasing the volume fraction of the homopolymers the thickness of the lamellar microdomains increases. The block copolymer chains were found to undergo an isochoric affine deformation on addition of the homopolymers or with the change of the thickness of the lamellar microdomains.