Morphology and Microphase Separation of Star Copolymers

Star copolymers have attracted significant interest due to their different characteristics compared with diblock copolymers, including higher critical micelle concentration, lower viscosity, unique spatial shape, or morphologies. Development of synthetic skills such as anionic polymerization and controlled radical polymerization have made it possible to make diverse architectures of polymers. Depending on the molecular architecture of the copolymer, numerous morphologies are possible, for instance, Archimedean tiling patterns and cylindrical microdomains at symmetric volume fraction for miktoarm star copolymers as well as asymmetric lamellar microdomains for star-shaped copolymers, which have not been reported for linear block copolymers. In this review, we focus on morphologies and microphase separations of miktoarm (A(m)B(n) and ABC miktoarm) star copolymers and star-shaped [(A-b-B)(n)] copolymers with nonlinear architecture. (C) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.