Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Journal or Book Title

Langmuir

Volume

24

Issue

7

First Page

3030

Last Page

3036

DOI

10.1021/la703006w

Abstract

Langevin dynamics simulations are performed on linear-dendritic diblock copolymers containing bead-spring, freely jointed chains composed of hydrophobic linear monomers and hydrophilic dendritic monomers. The critical micelle concentration (CMC), micelle size distribution, and shape are examined as a function of dendron generation and architecture. For diblock copolymers with a linear block of fixed length, it is found that the CMC increases with increasing dendron generation. This trend qualitatively agrees with experiments on linear-dendritic diblock and triblock copolymers with hydrophilic dendritic blocks and hydrophobic linear blocks. The flexibility of the dendritic block is altered by varying the number of spacer monomers between branch points in the dendron. When comparing linear-dendritic diblock copolymers with similar molecular weights, it is shown that increasing the number of spacer monomers in the dendron lowers the CMC due to an increase in flexibility of the dendritic block. Analysis on the micellar structure shows that linear-dendritic diblock copolymers pack more densely than what would be expected for a linear-linear diblock copolymer of the same molecular weight.

Comments

Reprinted (adapted) with permission from Langmuir 24 (2008): 3030, doi: 10.1021/la703006w. Copyright 2008 American Chemical Society.

Copyright Owner

American Chemical Society

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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