Bundling in brushes of directed and semiflexible polymers.
We explore the effect of an attractive interaction between parallel-aligned polymers which are perpendicularly grafted on a substrate. Such an attractive interaction could be due to, e.g., reversible cross-links. The competition between permanent grafting favoring a homogeneous state of the polymer brush and the attraction, which tends to induce in-plane collapse of the aligned polymers, gives rise to an instability of the homogeneous phase to a bundled state. In this latter state the in-plane translational symmetry is spontaneously broken and the density is modulated with a finite wavelength, which is set by the length scale of transverse fluctuations of the grafted polymers. We analyze the instability for two models of aligned polymers: directed polymers with line tension ε and weakly bending chains with bending stiffness κ.
Department of Physics, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu 702-701, Korea.
Panayotis
P
Benetatos
Eugene M
EM
Terentjev
Annette
A
Zippelius
D008958:Models, Molecular; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D013499:Surface Properties
D011108:Polymers