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High molecular weight block copolymers can be viewed as macromolecular surfactants when blended with thermodynamically incompatible homopolymers. This Letter describes the formation of polymeric bicontinuous microemulsions in mixtures containing a model diblock copolymer and two homopolymers. Although we attribute development of this equilibrium morphology to the effects of fluctuations, mean-field theory provides a quantitative strategy for preparing the bicontinuous state at blend compositions near an isotropic Lifshitz point.
Bates et al. (Mon,) studied this question.