State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, P. R. China.
Soft Matter. 2018 Jun 13;14(23):4679-4686. doi: 10.1039/c8sm00486b.
Compared to synthesizing a new block copolymer, blending of two types of block copolymers or a block copolymer and a homopolymer is a simple yet effective approach to create new self-assembled nanostructures. Here, we apply Monte Carlo (MC) simulations to mimic the co-assembly of AB/BC diblock copolymer blends within a three-dimensional (3D) soft confined space, which corresponds to the co-assembly confined in an emulsion droplet in experiment. The confined co-assemblies of four types of block copolymer blends at different block ratios, i.e., A8B8/B8C8, A6B10/B10C6, A12B4/B4C12 and A12B4/B10C6, are investigated by MC simulations. The simulation results reveal that the ratio of different types of blocks and the polymer-solvent interactions between the different blocks and the solvent determine the final self-assembled nanostructures. By tailoring these two controlling parameters, we not only reproduced some classic nanostructures, i.e., pupa-, onion-, and bud-like particles, but also predicted some unconventional nanostructures, such as patch-, Janus-, peanut-, disc- and snowman-like particles via MC simulations.
与合成新的嵌段共聚物相比，将两种类型的嵌段共聚物或嵌段共聚物与均聚物共混是一种简单而有效的方法，可以创造新的自组装纳米结构。在这里，我们应用蒙特卡罗（MC）模拟来模拟 AB/BC 两嵌段共聚物混合物在三维（3D）软受限空间中的共组装，这对应于实验中乳液液滴内的共组装受限。通过 MC 模拟研究了四种不同嵌段比的嵌段共聚物混合物的受限共组装，即 A8B8/B8C8、A6B10/B10C6、A12B4/B4C12 和 A12B4/B10C6。模拟结果表明，不同类型嵌段的比例以及不同嵌段与溶剂之间的聚合物-溶剂相互作用决定了最终的自组装纳米结构。通过调整这两个控制参数，我们不仅再现了一些经典的纳米结构，如蛹状、洋葱状和芽状颗粒，而且通过 MC 模拟预测了一些非常规的纳米结构，如斑块状、偏心神经营养因子样、花生状、盘状和雪人状颗粒。
