Network Model of the Disordered Phase in Symmetric Diblock Copolymer Melts

We present a model for the order-disorder transition of symmetric A-B diblock copolymer melts in which the disordered phase is treated as a bicontinuous network, and in which self-consistent field predictions of properties of an analogous ordered network are used to estimate some properties. Such a model is shown to accurately predict the latent heat of this transition. The dependence of the location of the transition upon the invariant degree of polymerization N is shown to be consistent with a simple hypothesis that the disordered bicontinuous structure is stabilized relative to an analogous ordered network by a nearly constant entropy per network junction.