Tricontinuous cubic structures and tilings with mesoscopic length scale for two kinds of three-component block copolymers with different architectures have been introduced in conjunction with three- and two-dimensional symmetry in crystallography. A typical example of the former is the tricontinuous Gyroid structure, whose space group is /4132, formed by an ABC linear block terpolymer, while the latter are periodic Archimedean tiling structures of (6.6.6), (4.8.8), (4.6.12) and (3.3.4.3.4), whose space group are
p3m1,
p4mm,
p6mm and
p4gm, respectively, observed for star-shaped terpolymers of the /
1.0S1.0Px type, where I, S and P denote polyisoprene, polystyrene and poly(2-vinylpyridine). Furthermore, a mesoscopic quasicrystalline structure with dodecagonal symmetry has been found for the blend of a star-shaped terpolymer and a homopolymer with the composition of /
1.0S2.7P2.5
View full abstract