Temperature Effects on Block Copolymer Micelle Based on the Scaling Model

Abstract

A model based on scaling theory was developed for the description of the diblock copolymer micelle system. The temperature effects on micelle equilibrium properties were investigated by the Flory-Huggins interaction parameter of polymer segment and solvent. By analysis of the chain-state in micelle corona, a multi-section density distribution function was proposed and the temperature effects on aggregation number, corona density distribution, micelle inner and outer radius were observed. The calculation results show that with increasing temperature, the change of chain-state in corona has little effect on the corona density, and the micelle aggregation number will rapidly increase with the slightly growing of the micelle radius, which implies the solvent squeezing from corona and the result is consistent with experiments.