Structure Analysis of Spherical Block Copolymer Micelles using Inverse Fourier Transform Method

Block copolymer micelles have unrealized potential as model spherical particles to explore the phase states and phase transition kinetics. However, one of the current challenges is that the precise experimental characterization of block copolymer micelles as a function of thermodynamic parameters such as temperature and micelle concentration is difficult. A simple model-free inverse Fourier transform method using a modification function to characterize block copolymer micelles will be presented. By employing the model-free inverse Fourier transform method, the temperature dependence of the size of strongly-segregated micelles in water, including the corona domain, is successfully extracted.