Аннотация: Ionic liquid/block copolymer systems are an extensively studied class of new functional materials that self-assemble on the nanometer scale. Ionic liquids (ILs) have been called “designed solvent” because of the tunability of solvation properties by choice of chemical structure of the cation and anion.
In the present work, the structural properties and phase behavior of IL/block copolymer systems are investigated using the polymer integral equation or PRISM (polymer interaction site model) theory. The method has been shown to be effective in the weak and intermediate segregation regimes. The self-assembly of semidilute diblock copolymer in an ionic liquid is explored as encoded in small-angle partial scattering structure factors. Particular emphasis is placed on the region above the order–disorder transition and below the spinodal line, where a disordered phase of micelles is observed. The mean-field spinodal temperature TS is estimated via high-temperature approximation as a function of copolymer concentration at two different lengths of cationic tail. The influence of the length of cationic tail on dependencies of TS and the order–disorder transition temperature, TODT, on the copolymer concentration is investigated.