Structural Studies of Three-Arm Star Block Copolymers Exposed to Extreme Stretch Suggests a Persistent Polymer Tube

We present structural small-angle neutron scattering studies of a three-armed polystyrene star polymer with short deuterated segments at the end of each arm. We show that the form factor of the three--armed star molecules in the relaxed state agrees with that of the random phase approximation of Gaussian chains. Upon exposure to large extensional flow conditions, the star polymers change conformation resulting in a highly stretched structure that mimics a fully extended three-armed tube model. All three arms are parallel to the flow, one arm being either in positive or negative stretching direction, while the two other arms are oriented parallel, right next to each other in the direction opposite to the first arm.