Fine-tuned order-order phase transitions in giant surfactants via interfacial engineering

Giant

Mingjun Huang¹  Chrys Wesdemiotis²  An-Chang Shi³  Wei Zhang⁴  Xueyan Feng⁴  Tong Liu⁴  Rui Zhang⁴  Jiahao Huang⁴  Dong Guo⁴  Wenpeng Shan⁴  Tao Li⁴  Ruimeng Zhang⁴  Stephen Z.D. Cheng⁴  Hao Liu⁴  Yuyang Ji⁵  Zebin Su⁵  Jialin Mao⁶ 

[1] Corresponding authors.;Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA;Department of Chemistry, The University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325, USA;Department of Polymer Science, College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, The University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325-3909, USA;South China Advanced Institute for Soft Matter Science and Technology, School of Molecular Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China;X-ray Science Division, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA;

关键词: Block copolymers;    Interfacial engineering;    Packing frustration;    Phase transition;    Self-assembly;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Thermotropic order-order phase transitions (OOTs) in block copolymers are not commonly observed in the strong segregation region. Phase separation of giant surfactants composed of hydrophilic molecular nanoparticles (MNPs) as heads and hydrophobic flexible polymer chains as tails occurs generally in the strong segregation region. By introducing a rigid molecular segment at the junction point of the giant surfactants, the interface between the MNPs and polymer tails could be delicately manipulated, resulting in the occurrence of thermotropic OOTs that are sensitively dependent on the properties of those junction segments. For samples with hydrophilic junction segments, no thermal-induced OOT has been observed. However, for samples with hydrophobic junction segments, complicated thermotropic OOTs between as many as four different ordered phases in a single giant surfactant system, from lamellae (LAM) to hexagonally perforated layer structure (HPL), double gyroids (DG), and finally to hexagonally packed cylinders (HEX), have been observed with increasing temperature. These results demonstrated that interfacial engineering could be used to regulate the self-assemble behavior of macromolecules at the nanometer scales.

【 授权许可】

Unknown