Recent progress on polydispersity effects on block copolymer phase behavior

Abstract

In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in block copolymer with broad dispersity. Previous studies showed that increasing polydispersity influences the self-assembly behavior of block copolymers; however, disagreements between experimental and computational studies remained on key issues including the extent of domain swelling with increasing block dispersity and the effects of polydispersity on order-disorder and order-order transitions in block copolymers. Furthermore, while polydispersity stabilized complex microdomain morphologies and macrophase separation were suggested by a number of computational reports, experimental evidences on the topic were rare. Building on these earlier studies, new advances have been made on the synthesis and characterization of polydisperse block copolymers. These recent studies resolve the existing controversies in the field and bring new insights on polydisperse block copolymer phase behavior. Here, we highlight studies on polydisperse block copolymers published in the past ten years.