Structure and dynamics of a polymer melt at an attractive surface

Abstract

We study the structural and dynamic properties of a polymer melt in the vicinity of adhesive solid substrate by means of Molecular Dynamics simulation at varying degree of surface adhesion. The properties of the individual polymer chains are examined as function of the distance to the interface and found to agree favorably with theoretical predictions. Thus, the adsorbed amount at the adhesive surface is found to scale with macromolecule length as Γ ∝ N regardless of adsorption strength. For chains within the range of adsorption we analyze in detail the probability size distributions of the various building blocks: loops, tails and trains, and find that loops and tails sizes follow power laws while train lengths decay exponentially thus confirming some recent theoretical results. The chain dynamics as well as the monomer mobility are also investigated and found to depend significantly on the proximity of a given layer to the solid adhesive surface with onset of vitrification for sufficiently strong adsorption.