Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol.114, No.23, 10528-10530, 2001
Testing strong-segregation theory against self-consistent field theory for block copolymer melts
We introduce a highly efficient self-consistent-field theory (SCFT) method for examining the cylindrical and spherical block copolymer morphologies using a standard unit cell approximation (UCA). The method is used to calculate the classical diblock copolymer phase boundaries deep into the strong-segregation regime, where they can be compared with recent improvements to strong-segregation theory (SST), The comparison suggests a significant discrepancy between the two theories indicating that our understanding of strongly stretched polymer brushes is still incomplete.