BICONTINUOUS PHASE IN DIBLOCK COPOLYMER MELTS WITH ADDED HOMOPOLYMER

We compute in the strong-segregation regime the phase diagram of A-B d iblock copolymer with added B homopolymer to see if the bicontinuous p hase can be stabilized by adding homopolymers. Our work is motivated b y the results of Ajdari and Leibler, who showed using a bending expans ion that a single copolymer bilayer in excess homopolymer is unstable to Gaussian bends if the copolymers are sufficiently asymmetric. Our m ethods, which are not limited to a bending expansion, determine the re gion of homopolymer concentration and copolymer asymmetry for which a bicontinuous phase might be stable.