Phase Behavior of Tapered Diblock Copolymers from Self-Consistent Field Theory

Tapered diblock copolymers are similar to AB diblock copolymers, but the sharp junction between the A and B blocks is replaced with a gradient region in which composition varies from mostly A to mostly B along its length. The A side of the taper can be attached to the A block (normal) or the B block (inverse). We demonstrate how taper length and direction affect the phase diagrams and density profiles using self-consistent field theory. Adding tapers shifts the order-disorder transition to lower temperature versus the diblock, and this effect is larger for longer tapers and for inverse tapers. However, tapered systems' phase diagrams and interfacial profiles do not simply match those of diblocks at a shifted effective temperature. For instance, we find that normal tapering widens the bicontinuous gyroid region of the phase diagram, while inverse tapering narrows this region, apparently due to differences in polymer organization at the interfaces.