THE CRITICAL MICELLE CONCENTRATION FOR THE SOLUTION OF POLYELECTROLYTE NEUTRAL BLOCK-COPOLYMERS/

The problem of the micelle formation in the solution of diblock copoly mers with one polyelectrolyte and one neutral block in selective solve nt is considered. It is shown that the application of scaling argument s of Alexander-de Gennes type to this problem leads to the ''open asso ciation'' picture of the micelle formation. The size distribution func tion for the micelles in the vicinity of critical micelle concentratio n (c.m.c.) is rather broad and does not have a pronounced bimodal char acter. The c.m.c. itself is manifested by the occurrence of the inflec tion point on the micelles size distribution function. These conclusio ns are supported by computer simulations. This picture is in contradic tion with most of experimental observations which correspond to ''clos ed association''. Therefore, more experimental and theoretical work is required to achieve an adequate understanding of the structure format ion at c.m.c. for block-copolymer solutions.