Aggregation behavior of the blends of PS-b-PEO-b-PS and PS-b-PMMA at the air/water interface

Abstract

In order to explore the aggregation mechanisms of mixed polymeric Langmuir monolayers and enrich the structures of their corresponding Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) films, a predominantly hydrophilic triblock copolymer polystyrene-block-poly(ethylene oxide)-block-polystyrene (SEOS69K, M_n = 69 000, 43.5 wt% PEO) was mixed with an amphiphilic diblock copolymer polystyrene-block-poly(methyl methacrylate) (SMMA34K, M_n = 33 500, 26.9 wt% PMMA). The Langmuir monolayers and LB films of SEOS69K, SMMA34K, and their blends were characterized by the Langmuir monolayer technique and tapping mode atomic force microscopy (AFM), respectively. The isotherms of the samples deviate to large areas with the increase of the SEOS69K content and exhibit pseudo-plateaus for the samples with above 80 wt% SEOS69K. The hysteresis degree of the mixed Langmuir monolayer with 80 wt% SEOS69K compressed up to 30 mN m⁻¹ is significantly larger than that with 20 wt% SEOS69K, which can be interpreted by a reasonable schematic illustration combining the predominant PEO and the few PEO/PMMA chain entanglements in the former with the low mobility of PEO and PMMA blocks. The mixed LB films with 10 wt% SEOS69K transferred at different pressures exhibit mixed structures of circular micelles and rod-like aggregates. However, all the other mixed LB films only exhibit circular micelles composed of PS cores and mixed PEO/PMMA coronas. Upon compression, the large close-packed aggregates split into small ones with more uniform sizes, which shows that the addition of SEOS69K can really improve the structure homogeneity of the mixed LB films. Moreover, a very simple formula was deduced to transform the isotherm of a mixed Langmuir monolayer as a function of a certain copolymer molecule area or repeating unit area.