pps proceeding - Abstract Preview
pps proceeding
Symposium: G05 - Polymer blends and alloys
Poster Presentation
 
 

FCC or HCP: Closely-Packed Sphere Phase of Block Copolymer/Homopolymer Blends

Chen Li-Ting (1)*, Chen Hsin-Lung (1)

(1) National Tsing-Hua University - Taiwan - Taiwan

In a previous study of the sphere-forming blend of a symmetric poly(ethylene oxide)-block-poly(1,4-butadiene) (PEO-b-PB) and a PB homopolymer (h-PB), a metastable trapped face-centered cubic (FCC) (t-FCC) phase developed from solvent casting was found to serve as the precursor for the subsequent order-order transition (OOT) from BCC to FCC phase on heating. Therefore, it may be speculated that the FCC phase developed at the higher temperature was relevant to the t-FCC phase. In order to remove the solvent history, here the PEO-b-PB was blended with a h-PB with lower molecular weight to lower the order-disorder transition temperature (TODT), such that the disordered micelle phase was accessed before thermal degradation. In this case, the equilibrium micelle ordering from the disordered state occurred on cooling. Here we show that, under this condition, hexagonal closely packed (HCP) phase developed upon cooling, attesting that HCP is more stable than FCC packing in the closely packed sphere phase of block copolymer spherical micelles. We further examine the micelle ordering in the blend with PEO-rich composition, and found that HCP is also more stable than FCC. The better thermodynamic stability of HCP was attributed to the more extensive connectivity of the tetrahedron and octahedron voids in the lattice, which prescribed a higher translational entropy of the homopolymer in the matrix phase.