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UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN); Department of Chemical Engineering; Department of Physics & Astronomy
Prof. Mark W. Matsen

Morse and co-workers at the University of Minnesota have proposed a profound hypothesis that the behavior of block copolymers is mathematical universal. This implies that chemically distinct block copolymers or mathematically different models all exhibit quantitatively identical behavior provided they are compared in terms of the appropriate system parameters. Most of the parameters have simple straightforward definitions. The only tricky one is the Flory-Huggins chi parameter that measures the incompatibility between the unlike components.

Morse and co-workers [1] recently proposed an accurate way of defining chi by matching the structure function, S(q), corresponding to small-angle scattering experiments to predictions from a sophisticated renormalized one-loop (ROL) calculation [2]. When applied to five distinct simulation models for symmetric diblock copolymers of various sizes, the order-disorder transitions (ODTs) all collapsed onto a universal curve [1].

Further evidence of the universality was presented in a follow-up paper [3]. The truly profound implication of universality is that accurate experimental predictions should be possible using simple models, provided they are appropriately parameterized. We have just recently demonstrated that this is indeed the case [4].