title: Orientational ordering transitions of semiflexible polymers in thin films: a Monte Carlo simulation.
abstract: Athermal solutions (from dilute to concentrated) of semiflexible macromolecules confined in a film of thickness D between two hard walls are studied by means of grand-canonical lattice Monte Carlo simulation using the bond fluctuation model. This system exhibits two phase transitions as a function of the thickness of the film and polymer volume fraction. One of them is the bulk isotropic-nematic first-order transition, which ends in a critical point on decreasing the film thickness. The chemical potential at this transition decreases with decreasing film thickness ("capillary nematization"). The other transition is a continuous (or very weakly first-order) transition in the layers adjacent to the hard planar walls from the disordered phase, where the bond vectors of the macromolecules show local ordering (i.e., "preferential orientation" along the x or y axes of the simple cubic lattice, but no long-range orientational order occurs), to a quasi-two-dimensional nematic phase (with the director at each wall being oriented along either the x or y axis), while the bulk of the film is still disordered. When the chemical potential or monomer density increase, respectively, the thickness of these surface-induced nematic layers grows, causing the disappearance of the disordered region in the center of the film.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Physics, Moscow State University, Moscow 119991, Russia.
authors.forename: V A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Ivanov
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Rodionova
authors.forename: E A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: An
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Martemyanova
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Stukan
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Paul
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Binder