Systematic progressions of core-shell polygon containing tiling patterns in melts of 2nd generation dendritic miktoarm star copolymers

Abstract

Dissipative particle dynamics simulations are used to investigate the self-assembly of generic 2nd generation dendritic 3-miktoarm star copolymers. These molecules can be conceptually conceived as the attachment of three ABC 3-miktoarm terpolymers to a common junction. In analogy to ABC 3-miktoarm star terpolymers the resulting morphologies show a number of cylindrical structures displaying a systematic progression through various 2D Archimedean tiling patterns as the molecular volume fractions are altered. The insertion of a variably sized junction region allows the controlled formation of tiling patterns where one polygonal component is a core-shell cylinder. A rich phase diagram is presented when invoking asymmetric interaction parameters indicating the possibility of jumping between these tiling patterns in a controllable way. We discuss how these core-shell containing tiling patterns potentially constitute self-assembled soft materials combining well-defined directional charge carriage and photonic band gap properties.