Energy segmental adsorption, solvent role

Such displacement effects, although often very pronounced, have not yet been studied systematically. They will be the subject of the present paper. We will discuss the adsorption of polymer from a mixture of two solvents and we will see that in some cases drastic effects occur as a function of the mixture composition. Also, we explore some consequences and practical applications of displacement. It turns out that displacement studies not only increase our insight on the role of the solvent in polymer adsorption but can also be used to determine the segmental adsorption energy. So far, experimental data for this quantity were very scarce. Some illustrative experiments will be discussed briefly. 

In most situations the experimental system is more complicated than one (homodisperse) polymer adsorbing from a single solvent. In multicomponent systems preferential adsorption always plays a role. A common example is the adsorption of a polydisperse polymer, where usually long chains adsorb preferentially over short ones, even if the adsorption energy per segment is the same. 

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