The self-assembly of five narrowly distributed novel rod-coil diblock copolymers

poly(styrene-block-(2

5-bis[4-methoxy-phenyl]oxycarbonyl) styrene) (PS-b-PMPCS)

in p-xylene

a selective solvent at room temperature

was studied. Therod-coil copolymers

which have the same PS length but different PMPCS length

were synthesized by 2

2

6

6-tetramethyl-I-piperidinyloxy (TEMPO) mediated living free radical polymerization. The influence of the rod length on the self-assembly morphology was studied by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). At a concentration of 2.0 mg/mL

those copolymers with relatively shorter PMPCS length (copolymers 1 and 2) form individual spherical micelles;those with relatively longer PMPCS length(copolymer 3 and 4) form "pearl chains"coexisting with individual spherical micelles;the ones with longest PMPCS length form "pearl chains"coexisting with occasionally formed nanofibees.The diameter of all the morphologies was controlled by the rod length.This gives us a way to govern the self-assembly morphology by altering the length of one block in the block copolymer.