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Entropy of polymer brushes in good solvents: a Monte Carlo study

Macromolecules, ISSN: 0024-9297, Vol: 40, Issue: 3, Page: 723-730
2007
  • 29
    Citations
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  • 18
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Metrics Details

  • Citations
    29
    • Citation Indexes
      29
  • Captures
    18

Article Description

Entropy of polymer brushes composed of monodisperse flexible polymer chains regularly grafted on a flat substrate plane with an equal "spacing" is numerically studied in the good solvent limit. We consider systems of not only a free polymer brush but also a compressed polymer brush and two polymer brushes facing each other at a "distance". The total number of configurations, entropy, and force are calculated for various chain lengths and graft densities by means of Monte Carlo simulations using an efficient enrichment algorithm on a simple cubic lattice. We demonstrate that the effect of excluded volume plays an essential role. We find that the entropy of a free polymer brush falls as -ΔS ∼ (spacing), while the entropy of a compressed polymer brush and two polymer brushes agrees very well with the analytical SCF theory by Milner, Witten, and Cates [Macromolecules 1988, 22, 2610-2619]. The resulting interlayer force agrees also excellently well with the recent experiments by Yamamoto et al. [Macromolecules 2000, 33, 5602-5607]. © 2007 American Chemical Society.

Bibliographic Details

Kaoru Ohno; Takashi Sakamoto; Taisuke Minagawa; Yutaka Okabe

American Chemical Society (ACS)

Chemistry; Materials Science

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