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Updated: Sep 22, 2025

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
Orientation-Dependent Order-Disorder Transition of Block Copolymer Lamellae in Electric Fields
Heiko G Schoberth1, Christian W Pester1, Markus Ruppel2
1Lehrstuhl für Makromolekulare Materialien und Oberflächen, DWI an der RWTH Aachen e.V., RWTH Aachen University, D-52056 Aachen, Germany.
Abstract:
Electric fields have been shown to stabilize the disordered phase of near-critical block copolymer solutions. Here, we use in situ synchrotron small-angle X-ray scattering to examine how the initial orientation of lamellar domains with respect to the external field (φ) affects the shift in the order-disorder transition temperature (TODT) of lyotropic solutions of poly(styrene-b-isoprene) in toluene. We find a downward shift of the transition temperature, which scales with lamellar orientation as ΔTODT ∼ cos2 φ, in accordance with theory.
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