MORPHOLOGIES OF MICELLES OF ABC LINEAR AND MIKTOSTAR TRIBLOCK COPOLYMERS

1, 2 Except for special cases, 3-8 the use of such solvents led normally to core-shell-corona spherical or cylindrical micelles. We report here the formation and formation mechanism of micelles with various interesting morphologies in solvents which are poor for the middle B block of ABC linear triblock copolymers. Lodge, Hillmyer, and coworkers have studied extensively micelles of ABC miktostar block copolymers. 9-11 We will describe a new method for preparation of miktostar polymers and report preliminary results on morphologies of micelles formed from some miktostar ABC triblock copolymers. Experimental Polymers. Precursors to all the polymers used were prepared by anionic polymerization. The samples were carefully characterized by a size-exclusion chromatograph equipped with a light scattering detector and a differential refractive index detector. All polymers have polydispersity indices less than 1.05. The linear triblock copolymers used included poly(glyceryl monomethacrylate)-block-poly(2-cinnamoyloxyethyl methacrylate)-blockpoly(tert-butyl acrylate), PGMA310-b-PCEMA130-b-PtBA110 and PGMA115-bPCEMA195-b-PtBA105, as well as poly(n-butyl methacrylate)-block-poly(2cinnamoyloxyethyl methacrylate)-block-poly(tert-butyl acrylate), PBMA350-bPCEMA160-b-PtBA160. Here the subscripts denote the number of repeat units of the blocks.