ABSTRACT
The growth of the block copolymer industry has reached a high level of commer cial importance, involving many new products and industry participants, as well as a large number of academic research groups. The increasing importance and in terest in block copolymers arises mainly from their unique properties in solution and in the solid state, which are a consequence of their molecular structure. A block copolymer is a combination of two or more polymers joined end to end. Star-block or radial-block copolymers have branched structures and will not be considered here. In particular, sequences of different chemical composition are usually incompatible and therefore have a tendency to segregate. Amphiphilic properties in solution and microdomain formation in the solid state are directly re lated to this specific molecular architecture, which can be designed by using ex isting monomers and polymers.
