The structure and phase transitions in polymer blends, diblock copolymers and liquid crystalline polymers: the Landau-Ginzburg approach

TL;DR

This paper applies the Landau-Ginzburg model to analyze phase transitions and static properties in various complex polymer systems, including blends, copolymers, and liquid crystalline polymers, using multiple theoretical methods.

Contribution

It introduces a unified Landau-Ginzburg framework for studying phase behavior in diverse polymer systems with different architectures and flexibilities.

Findings

Phase diagrams and scattering intensities characterized.

Single chain behavior near critical points analyzed.

Fluctuation effects on phase boundaries discussed.

Abstract

The polymer systems are discussed in the framework of the Landau-Ginzburg model. The model is derived from the mesoscopic Edwards hamiltonian via the conditional partition function. We discuss flexible, semiflexible and rigid polymers. The following systems are studied: polymer blends, flexible diblock and multi-block copolymer melts, random copolymer melts, ring polymers, rigid-flexible diblock copolymer melts, mixtures of copolymers and homopolymers and mixtures of liquid crystalline polymers. Three methods are used to study the systems: mean-field model, self consistent one-loop approximation and self consistent field theory. The following problems are studied and discussed: the phase diagrams, scattering intensities and correlation functions, single chain statistics and behavior of single chain close to critical points, fluctuations induced shift of phase boundaries. We concentrate on static, equilibrium properties of the polymer systems.