Surfactant-induced mesomorphic structures in flexible polymers

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Abstract
During the last two years, mesomorphic structures for polyelectrolytes with ion- ically bound surfactants have been reported. This has now been extended to the case of hydrogen bonding. For poly (4-vinyl pyridine)-pentadecyl phenol (P4VP-(PDP)x), the long period Lp of the lamellar structure is found to decrease as a function of x, in complete contrast to polyelectrolyte systems. Scaling arguments predict that the x-dependence of the long period is entirely due to the reduction in the thickness of the polymer layer and satisfles Lp/ x¡1 ,a s observed experimentally. Polyelectrolyte-surfactant complexes, on the other hand, are always locally fully complexed due to cooperative complexation with a corresponding x-independent long period.