ANISOTROPIC FLUCTUATIONS AND STABILITY OF ORDERED PHASES IN DIBLOCK COPOLYMER SYSTEMS

A review of our recent work on the stability of ordered phases in dibl ock copolymer systems is given. The stability is investigated and kine tic pathways of order-order transitions are explored using our novel t heory of anisotropic fluctuations. The analogy between a polymer chain in periodic structures and electron in crystalline solids is discover ed and exploited to obtain reciprocal space results. Anisotropic densi ty-density correlation functions are computed for all ordered phases a nd used to obtain the spinodal lines in the weak segregation region of the lamellar, cylindrical and spherical phases. The most unstable flu ctuation modes are identified. These in turn help in determining the k inetic pathways during the order-order transitions between the various phases.