The role of cooling rate in crystallization-driven block copolymer self-assembly.

ABSTRACT: Self-assembly of crystalline-coil block copolymers (BCPs) in selective solvents is often carried out by heating the mixture until the sample appears to dissolve and then allowing the solution to cool back to room temperature. In self-seeding experiments, some crystallites persist during sample annealing and nucleate the growth of core-crystalline micelles upon cooling. There is evidence in the literature that the nature of the self-assembled structures formed is independent of the annealing time at a particular temperature. There are, however, no systematic studies of how the rate of cooling affects self-assembly. We examine three systems based upon poly(ferrocenyldimethylsilane) BCPs that generated uniform micelles under typical conditions where cooling took pace on the 1-2 h time scale.

SUBMITTER: Song S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8729813 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature