Strain energy effects on the ordering process in diblock styrene-butadiene copolymer

摘要

The technique of time-resolved small-angle x-ray scattering is used to monitor the disorder-order transformation occurring in asymmetric, diblock styrene-butadiene. A rapid thermal quench is applied to drive the system from its initial high-temperature disordered state to a low-temperature ordered structure, a body-centered cubic lattice of styrene spheres characterized by a series of concentric Debye rings in the two-dimensional scattering profile. At relatively late times in the microdomain ordering process, the uniform Debye rings were seen to rapidly develop nonuniformities indicating the existence of preferred orientation with a fiber texture, the [110] axis of the bcc structure defining the fiber axis. These results are interpreted in the context of a developing transformation strain energy during the ordering process and shown to be consistent with accompanying changes in lattice spacing as well as earlier observations of apparent fluctuations in the ordering process.