1990/10/01 by Frank S. Bates, Glenn H. Fredrickson · 13 citations
Chemistry · Materials Science · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #Machine Learning in Materials Science #Block Copolymer Self-Assembly
paper · doi:10.1146/annurev.pc.41.100190.002521
Block copolymers are macromolecules composed of sequences, or blocks, of chemically distinct repeat units. The development of this field originated with the discovery of termination-free anionic polymerization, which made possible the sequential addition of monomers to various carbanion-ter minated (living) linear polymer chains. Polymerization of just two dis tinct monomer types (e.g. styrene and isoprene) leads to a class of materials referred to as AB block copolymers. Within this class, a variety of molec ular architectures is possible. For example, the simplest combination, obtained by the two-step anionic polymerization of A and B monomers, is an (A-B) dioblock copolymer. A three-step reaction provides for the preparation of (ABA) or (BAB) triblock copolymer. Alternatively, living diblock copolymers can be reacted with an n-functional coupling agent to produce (A-B)n star-block copolymers, where n = 2 constitutes a triblock copolymer. Several representative (A-B)n block copolymer architectures