MONTE-CARLO SIMULATION OF MICELLE FORMATION IN BLOCK-COPOLYMER SOLUTIONS

Short block copolymers in selective solvents (bad for A-block, good fo r B-block) are modeled by flexible bead-spring chains, where beads int eract with short range Morse potentials of variable strength. It is sh own that already very shea chains (N-A = N-B = 2) exhibit a rather wel l-defined critical micelle concentration (cmc). The mass distribution of the micelles and their gyration tensor components as well as their internal structure are studied. It is shown that the relaxation time i ncreases exponentially with the strength EAA Of the attractive energy between the A-monomers, and thus frozen-in micelles of medium size are obtained when E-AA is chosen too large. Our results are compared to s tudies of related but somewhat different models.