DOI: 10.1051/jp2:1993188
J. Phys. II France 3 (1993) 1141-1159

End effects in adsorption of homopolymers and triblock copolymers

F. Aguilera-Granja¹ and Ryoichi Kikuchi<sup>2

1</sup>  Instituto de Física "Manuel Sandoval Vallarta", Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, S.L.P. 78000, México
²  Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1595, U.S.A.

(Received 29 October 1992, revised 18 February 1993, accepted 23 March 1993)

Abstract
The effects of end segments on the conformation of polymers adsorbed on a flat surface are studied theoretically by the use of an analytical statistical mechanics (the Cluster Variational Method, CVM) and a simulation based on the CVM output. Based on the simulation, we derive information on the thickness of the adsorbed layer, the number of loops, the area covered by a polymers, fractions of the train, tail and loop portions of an adsorbed polymer, the average number of tails, and related geometrical quantities. The conformations of the adsorbed polymers show a strong dependence on the end segment behavior. The result derived in the paper give us guidelines for obtaining some specific conformation when triblock copolymers are used in the adsorption studies.

PACS
05.20 - 05.50 - 82.65D - 61.25H - 82.20W

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