An advance in the theory of strongly segregated polymers

The strong segregation theory (SST) of block-copolymers/polymer brushes is extended by incorporating a new leading correction to the asymptotic (χ N → ∞ ) limit. In particular we found an additional feature of the brush structure: a proximal layer of thickness μ where the molecular potential is essentially non-parabolic; μ ∝ √ L in the case of block-copolymer microdomains where L is the domain size. The effect of the edge (interpenetration) layer is also quantified. The novel theory accounts for the recently reported discrepancies between the SST results and the numerical SCFT predictions.