Anchor regime

A summary of the conclusions from this fitting procedure is as follows. In the very strong anchoring limit (w > 10) the value of does not depend on the history of the system. In the weak anchoring regime we find that... 

A weak or strong anchoring regime is estimated from the value of the dimensionless ratio... 

Here, D stands for the characteristic geometrical length of the system. In the case of spherical particles or strongly anisotropic rod-like particles immersed in a nematic LC phase, D stands for the particle diameter or width, respectively. The strong anchoring regime, in which the surface-imposed tendency is... 

If the solvent is nonselective, the anchor has a swollen structure similar to an adsorbed homopolymer. In the case of adsorption of an AB block copol5mier from nonselective solvents there are two possible cases (38) The first is referred to as the buoy regime, in which the anchor are small and adsorption is dominated by repulsive interactions between the buoys. Increasing the length of the anchor will increase the amount adsorbed. The second case is called the anchor regime, in which the anchor layer is saturated and the buoys are small in size. Here, increasing the length of the anchor block will not increase the adsorbed amount. 

From the above it is clear that to get high grafting densities from the adsorption of diblock copolymers one needs to meet three requirements (1) a strong attraction between anchor block and surface, (2) avoidance of crowding of the anchor blocks at the surface as a limiting factor (keep out of the anchor regime), and (3) no high kinetic barrier built up for the polymers to reach the surface. 

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