Studies on the 3-Lamellar Morphology of Miktoarm Terpolymers

The morphologies of ABC miktoarm star terpolymer consisting of polystyrene (PS), polyisoprene (PI), and poly(2-vinylpyridine) (P2VP) were studied by combining small-angle neutron and X-ray scattering (SANS and SAXS) and transmission electron microscopy. We find that this system displays a rich morphological behavior including an alternate lamellar (ALT.LAM), cylinder in undulated lamellar (CYLU-LAM), and 3-lamellar (LAM-3) phase.

While the SAXS data alone were insufficient to conclusively differentiate between possible phases, we show that the use of selective deuteration and SANS is essential to unambiguously identify the morphology. In particular, the primary peak in SANS for the miktoarm polymer containing deuterated PS was found to be lower than the next two higher order peaks.

Such an unusual scattering pattern for a lamellar morphology was verified by self-consistent fieldt heory calculations when the relative strength of the interaction between PI–P2VP over PS–PI is equal to or greater than2 (χIV/χSI ≥ 2).