2011/04/26 by D. Reith, Daniel Reith, Andrey Milchev +5 · 29 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Hydrogels: synthesis, properties, applications #Monomer #Monte Carlo method #Perpendicular #Polymer #Polymer Surface Interaction Studies #Ring (chemistry) #Scaling #Surface (topology) #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/95/28003
published in Europhysics Letters (EPL) 95(2), 28003 (Institute of Physics) · 13 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2011/04/26 · openalex publication_date 2011/06/27 · arxiv updated 2015/05/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A comparative simulation study of polymer brushes formed by grafting at a planar surface either flexible linear polymers (chain length N L ) or (non-catenated) ring polymers (chain length N R =2 N L ) is presented. Two distinct off-lattice models are studied, one by Monte Carlo methods, the other by molecular dynamics, using a fast implementation on graphics processing units (GPUs). It is shown that the monomer density profiles ρ( z ) in the z -direction perpendicular to the surface for rings and linear chains are practically identical, ρ R (2 N L , z )=ρ L ( N L , z ). The same applies to the pressure, exerted on a piston at height z , as well. While the gyration radii components of rings and chains in the z -direction coincide, too, and increase linearly with N L , the transverse components differ, even with respect to their scaling properties: R gxy ( L ) ∝ N L 1/2 , R gxy ( R ) ∝ N L 0.4 . These properties are interpreted in terms of the statistical properties known for ring polymers in dense melts.