IDEAL POLYMER-CHAINS OF VARIOUS ARCHITECTURES AT A SURFACE

We study the macroscopic behavior of ideal polymer chains of various architectures in the vicinity of a surface, by considering that at least one of the units of the chains is in contact with the surface. The probability that any unit will be in contact with the surface is employed and the macroscopic properties are determined as averages over this probability. The present model is an amendment to the model used previously with the one end of a linear chain fixed at the surface, and though it is a simplification to the full problem where the chains can move freely in the whole space, it is free from the necessity to include the volume and the polymer concentration in order to describe chains in the vicinity of the surface. We estimate the mean number of contacts between a chain and the surface for the cases of linear, ring, regular star, and regular comb polymers as the basic quantity for the description of both the thermodynamics of chains at a surface and the degree of adsorption of polymers of various architectures. © 1990, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.