Advancements in nanotechnology and materials science have led to an increased demand for specific material functions, preparation, design of polymer particles with ordered internal surface mesostructures. In this work, well-shaped spheres poly(2,2,2-trifluoroethyl methacrylate)-b-poly(2-vinylpyridine) four different molecular weights are prepared by 3D confined self-assembly. After thermal anne...

We generalize de Gennes' theory of the microphase separation of cross-finked polymer nfixtures to take into account the spatial fluctuations of the elasticity constant c, preventing the mixture from complete segregation. Within a mean-field analysis we found that the spatial fluctuations of c(r), which are assumed to obey the Poisson distribution, enlarge the size of the domains. The latter is ...

– The physical properties of blends of distinct homopolymers, cross-linked beyond the gelation point, are addressed via a Landau approach involving a pair of coupled order-parameter fields: one describing vulcanisation, the other describing local phase separation. Thermal concentration fluctuations, present at the time of cross-linking, are frozen in by cross-linking, and the structure of the r...

Silicon microchips have continued to grow progressively smallerto meet the demands of a competitive market. The next step indevelopment will send the chips from micro-order to nano-order,giving rise to new and challenging complications. Here, twomethods are explored to develop such technology. The firstinvolves molecular beam epitaxial (MBE) growth of isotopicallycon...

We investigate the dynamics of phase separation in two-component fluid membranes confined between parallel and rigid bounding plates. Through numerical simulation, we find dramatic slow coarsening of the order parameter field within the simulation time. In particular, a microphase separation is obtained as an equilibrium phase for sufficiently large values of the elastic coupling, being consist...

Recent experimental results demonstrated that polymer grafted nanoparticles in solvents display self-assembly behavior similar to the microphase separation of block copolymers and other amphiphiles. We present a mean-field theory and complementary computer simulations to shed light on the parametric underpinnings of the experimental observations. Our theory suggests that such self-assembled str...