Long Tails with Flower-like Conformations Undergo an Escape Transition in Homopolymer Adsorption Layers
| Autor: | Frans A. M. Leermakers |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Materials science
Polymers and Plastics Organic Chemistry Flower like 02 engineering and technology 010402 general chemistry 021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology 01 natural sciences Article 0104 chemical sciences Condensed Matter::Soft Condensed Matter Inorganic Chemistry Solvent Adsorption Chemical physics Materials Chemistry Life Science 0210 nano-technology Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter VLAG |
| Zdroj: | Macromolecules, 53(10), 3900-3906 Macromolecules 53 (2020) 10 Macromolecules |
| ISSN: | 1520-5835 0024-9297 3900-3906 |
| Popis: | De Gennes predicted that homopolymer adsorption on a solid–liquid interface results in an adsorption profile with a proximal, a central, and a distal region, wherein, for a good solvent, the central region has a self-similar structure with a density profile that decays as a power law with a coefficient of −4/3. Recent numerical self-consistent field (SCF) predictions for the long-chain length (N) limit revealed a more complex central region with an inner part, where the loops dominate the layer, with a (mean-field) power-law coefficient of −2 and an outer part, where tails dominate, with a “de Gennes” scaling of −4/3. The tails with length t < t* contribute to the inner part of the central region, and these have similar conformations as the loops. The outer part is populated by tails with a length t > t*, and these behave differently. With the increasing length of the tails, there exists a weak escape transition at t = tescape ≈ N/10. Long tails in the adsorption profile (t ≳ t* ∝ N0.733) show enhanced fluctuations due to this nearby escape transition, and this explains the excluded volume scaling for the outer part of the central region in SCF. With this interpretation, the −2 scaling found by SCF for the inner part should be classified as a mean-field result. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|