Micellar Structure of Amphiphilic Statistical Copolymers Bearing Dodecyl Hydrophobes in Aqueous Media

Abstract

The structure of micellar aggregates formed from ionic statistical copolymers of N-acryloyl-amino acids and N-dodecylmethacrylamide in 0.05 M aqueous NaCl was studied by light scattering and fluorescence. The experimental results indicated that the tendency of the interchain aggregation increased with the hydrophobic monomer content for each series of the copolymers but decreased with hydrophobicity of the amino acid residue in the copolymers. On the other hand, while the micellar structure of the statistical copolymers strongly depended on the kind of the hydrophobe, it is little dependent on the kind of the electrolyte monomer unit at low ionic strength. Using these data, a theoretical analysis taking into account the chain stiffness effect revealed that uni-core micelles formed from the ionic statistical copolymers were of flower type with a minimum loop size.