Fragmentation of Fiberlike Structures: Sonication Studies of Cylindrical Block Copolymer Micelles and Behavioral Comparisons to Biological Fibrils

In alkane solvents, poly(isoprene-b-ferrocenyldimethylsilane) (PI-b-PFS) block copolymer forms fiberlike micelles, which show intriguing similarities with biological fibers such as amyloid fibers. Both systems exhibit fiber growth by a nucleated self-assembly mechanism and rapidly fragment upon exposure to the shear forces of ultrasonic irradiation. Sonication of PI-b-PFS cylindrical micelles was studied quantitatively by static light scattering and by electron microscopy. Both techniques are in excellent agreement and show that the weight-average length of sonicated micelles decreases as a function of sonication time. Simulation of the cleavage of micelles using different scission models shows that micelle fragmentation follows a Gaussian model and that the scission is highly dependent on micelle length, in contrast to DNA and polymer chain scission. We speculate that biological fibers, which are similar in length and rigidity to PFS block copolymer micelles, fragment by a similar mechanism when subjected to sonication.