Enrichment of the chain ends in polymer melts at interfaces

Jiang-Sheng Wang; Kurt Binder

doi:doi:10.1051/jp1:1991226

Issue		J. Phys. I France Volume 1, Number 11, November 1991


Page(s)		1583 - 1590
DOI		https://doi.org/10.1051/jp1:1991226

DOI: 10.1051/jp1:1991226
J. Phys. I France 1 (1991) 1583-1590

Enrichment of the chain ends in polymer melts at interfaces

Jiang-Sheng Wang and Kurt Binder

Institut für Physik, Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität, Staudinger Weg 7, D-6500 Mainz, Germany and Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung, D-6500 Mainz, Germany

(Received 21 May 1991, accepted in final form 8 July 1991)

Abstract
By Monte Carlo simulation of two lattice models of polymer melts, the enrichment of the chain ends in the vicinity of a wall is obsserved. For the bond fluctuation model with attractive interactions between the ends and wall, $\varepsilon/k_{\rm B} T=-1$ and 0, the enhancement of the density of ends increases with chain lengths, while when the interaction is repulsive, $\varepsilon/k_{\rm B} T=+1$ , the ends get depleted. The self-avoiding walk model was simulated with the slithering snake algorithm and behaves similarly. The polymer center of mass density profile, radius of gyration and end-to-end distance components parallel and perpendicular to the wall as functions of center of mass distance z scale with $R_{\rm g}$ , where $R_{\rm g}$ is radius of gyration of the polymer chains in the bulk.