Rheology, Dielectric, Relaxation, and Adhesion of Thermodynamically Confined Diblock Copolymer Chains

Various thermodynamic requirements exist in strongly segregated A-B diblock copolymer systems. Some of them, e.g., an osmotic requirement of uniform segment density distribution in microdomains, impose a constraint on the block conformation. On the other hand, there always exists an elastic requirement of randomizing the conformation. These contradicting requirements thermodynamically confine the copolymer chains, thereby providing them some unique properties. Those properties are briefly reviewed and their thermodynamic origins are discussed.