THE INTERFACIAL THICKNESS OF SYMMETRICAL DIBLOCK COPOLYMERS - THEORY AND EXPERIMENT

A recent application of density functional theory to the structure and thermodynamics of the ordering of symmetric, tangent hard site, diblo ck copolymers [S. K. Nath ct al., J. Chem. Phys. 106, 1950 (1997)] pre dicted an interfacial thickness larger than would be expected from pre vious self-consistent-field studies of thread chains. Here we compare the theoretical predictions with the few experimental measurements of interfacial thickness in symmetric diblocks. It is observed that predi ctions of the thickness of the interface are sensitive to the details of the monomer structure included in the underlying model, and that th e range of the experimental measurements is spanned by the two theoret ical models. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.