On energy minimizers of the diblock copolymer problem

  • Xiaofeng Ren

    Utah State University, Logan, USA
  • Juncheng Wei

    University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Abstract

We view the free energy of a diblock copolymer system as a variational problem, in which the integrand of the functional contains an interesting nonlocal term, and a small parameter \e\e. We prove that as \e\e approaches 00, the energy minimizers develop a growing number, of the order \e1/3\e^{-1/3}, of periodic oscillations, explaining the micro-phase separation phenomenon.

Cite this article

Xiaofeng Ren, Juncheng Wei, On energy minimizers of the diblock copolymer problem. Interfaces Free Bound. 5 (2003), no. 2, pp. 193–238

DOI 10.4171/IFB/78