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Self-Consistent Field Approach for Crosslinked Copolymer Materials

A generalized self-consistent field approach for polymer networks with fixed topology is developed. It is shown that the theory reproduces the localization of crosslinks which is characteristic for gels. The theory is then used to study the order-disorder transition in regular networks of endlinked diblock copolymers. Compared to diblock copolymer melts, the transition is shifted towards lower values of the incompatibility parameter $χ$ (the Flory- Huggins parameter). Moreover, the transition becomes strongly first order already at the mean-field level. If stress is applied, the transition is further shifted and finally vanishes in a critical point.