Nanostructured molecular brush copolymers

The molecular organization of biopolymers is often much more complex than that of polymers synthesized in a chemical laboratory. Work is underway to systematically close this gap. Recent progress in controlled radical polymerization has made it possible to synthesize increasingly complex ionic macromolecules with controlled dimensions and topology. As a result, well-defined ionic block copolymers [10], colloidal [4] and molecular [8] PE brushes, and star-like PEs [9] have become available. In addition to emerging applications, such nanostructures constitute excellent model systems. 

As a result of the microphase separation occurring above the critical micelle concentration, different nanostructures can be observed. Blends of homopolymer and copolymer (A/A-B) exhibit different morphologies that have been described first by Hashimoto et al. [2,3,36], who proposed a classification in terms of solubility of the copolymer brushes by the homopolymer. On the basis of these reports, De Gennes [37] and Gallot et al. [6] further investigated the structure formation in binary polymer blends. These studies established that the final morphology depends on the molecular weight of the homopolymers in the blend. As depicted in Fig. 6.4, four different situations have been described [2,3,36] ... 

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