Towards a Rational Morphology Control of Frozen Copolymer Aggregates

Journal Article (2017)
Author(s)

Laurence Jennings (University of Strasbourg)

Gilles Waton (University of Strasbourg)

François Schosseler (University of Strasbourg)

E Mendes (TU Delft - ChemE/Advanced Soft Matter)

Research Group
ChemE/Advanced Soft Matter
Copyright
© 2017 Laurence Jennings, Gilles Waton, François Schosseler, E. Mendes
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1039/C7SM01086A
More Info
expand_more
Publication Year
2017
Language
English
Copyright
© 2017 Laurence Jennings, Gilles Waton, François Schosseler, E. Mendes
Research Group
ChemE/Advanced Soft Matter
Pages (from-to)
1-10
Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Abstract

Kinetically frozen copolymer micelles are commonly prepared by confining amphiphilic block copolymers in the evaporating dispersed phase of oil-in-water emulsions. We revisit the mechanisms of this process by examining its successive steps separately: the formation of the solvent/water interface, the emulsification, the solvent evaporation and the formation of aggregates. We bring into evidence that: (i) spontaneous water-in-solvent emulsification, i.e., the formation of a double emulsion, is a necessary step for the subsequent assembly of the copolymers into kinetically frozen aggregates with certain morphologies far from equilibrium. (ii) Equilibration of the copolymer conformation at the solvent–water interfaces is a relatively slow process that can be outpaced, or even quenched before completion, by fast solvent evaporation rates. (iii) Rather than being dictated by the packing parameter at equilibrium, the morphology of the aggregates is determined by the effective copolymer conformation at the solvent–water interface when they form. (iv) Ultra-long worm-like micelles do not form by a direct digitation of the dispersed oil phase into the water continuous phase but through the inversion of the double emulsion. From these findings, we design a simple setup that allows us to control the morphology of the frozen aggregates obtained from a given copolymer composition by simply tuning the solvent evaporation rate.

Files

Jenning_Submitted.pdf
(pdf | 8.37 Mb)
- Embargo expired in 08-08-2018
License info not available