Polymer brush chain conformations

The effect of the interdigitation between the polymer chains of two brushes on the interaction force profile is plotted in Fig. 8 for three polymers PVP-PI 69-39, PVP-PI 38-69, and PS-X (140 K). The solid curves present the results in which the interdigitation was taken into account, while the dashed ones those in which the interdigitation was neglected. For the former, the chain conformational partition function [Eq. (5)] involves a 2mX2m supermatrix G for which the chain free ends can be located in any lattice layer between the two surfaces. For the latter, the conformational partition function involves a m X in supermatrix G with chains con-... 

Polymer brush systems are theoretically and experimentally of great interest as the change in the conformational entropy of the attached chains and... 

A different approach was used by Milner [326] in order to predict the phase diagram for asymmetric copolymer architectures (for example A2B, A3B etc. types of miktoarm stars). The free energy of the system can be calculated by summing the free energies of the polymer brushes existing on the two sides of the interphase. Milner described the effects of both chain architecture (i.e., number of arms) and elastic (conformational) asymmetry of the dissimilar chains, in the strong segregation limit, by the parameter... 

We can visualize that when our hair is rubbed with a plastic plate, strands of hair stand up from the scalp due to electrostatic repulsion among them. Similarly, when charged functional groups, such as diethylamino groups, are introduced onto the graft chains, the polymer chains extend from the pore surface due to their mutual repulsion. This extended polymer brush conformation provides the protein with three-dimensional binding sites. The multilayer binding of various proteins onto the ion-... 

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