We study microphase separation in melts of diblock copolymers consisting of a main chain liquid crystalline block and an isotropic block. In the nematic phase the nematic block is easily stretched due to the presence of hairpins. This effect dominates splay and thus favors spherical micelles and cylinders with a nematic cores. The phase diagram is thus qualitatively different from that of an isotropic diblock and shows multiply reentrant sequences. The mesophases of nematic-isotropic diblocks afford opportunities for studying finite size effects on the nematic transition.
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Williams et al. (1993) studied this question.
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