A Parabolic Density Profile for Grafted Polymers

The authors study the statistics of a grafted polymer brush, consisting of a set of monodisperse chains in solution, each attached irreversibly by one end to a flat surface. They use a self-consistent field method, valid in the limit of weak excluded volume and at moderately high surface coverage. E...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEurophysics letters Vol. 5; no. 5; pp. 413 - 418
Main Authors Milner, S. T, Witten, T. A, Cates, M. E
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IOP Publishing 01.03.1988
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Summary:The authors study the statistics of a grafted polymer brush, consisting of a set of monodisperse chains in solution, each attached irreversibly by one end to a flat surface. They use a self-consistent field method, valid in the limit of weak excluded volume and at moderately high surface coverage. Exploiting the fact that the chains are highly stretched, they map the problem (in the long-chain limit) onto one involving the motion of classical particles in an equal-time potential, which they can solve exactly. The resulting density profile for the brush takes a parabolic form.
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ISSN:0295-5075
1286-4854
DOI:10.1209/0295-5075/5/5/006