Effect of Salt on Self-Assembly in Charged Block Copolymer Micelles

We consider self-assembly of block copolymers with one charged (polyelectrolyte) and one hydrophobic block in a salt-added solution. In the case of short hydrophobic and long polyelectrolyte block the copolymers form starlike polyelectrolyte micelles, while in the opposite case so-called crew-cut micelles are found. Upon an increase in the salt concentration the number of chains in a micelle increases, while the radius of the micellar corona weakly decreases due to enhanced screening of the Coulomb repulsion between the charged blocks. The exponents of the corresponding power-law dependences are obtained on the basis of scaling arguments and compared to the experimental observation.