Surface segregation of conformationally asymmetric polymer blends.
We have generalized the Edwards' method of collective description of dense polymer systems in terms of effective potentials to polymer blends in the presence of a surface. With this method we have studied conformationally asymmetric athermic polymer blends in the presence of a hard wall to the first order in effective potentials. For polymers with the same gyration radius Rg but different statistical segment lengths lA and lB the excess concentration of stiffer polymers at the surface is derived as delta rho A(z=0) approximately (lB-2 - lA-2)ln(R2g/l2c), where lc is a local length below of which the incompressibility of the polymer blend is violated. For polymer blends differing only in degrees of polymerization the shorter polymer enriches the wall.
Stepanow
Semjon
S
Fachbereich Physik, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle, D-06099 Halle, Germany.
Fedorenko
Andrei A
AA