Eur. Phys. J. E 5, 519-530 (2001)

Inwardly curved polymer brushes: concave is not like convex

M. Manghi¹, M. Aubouy¹, C. Gay² and C. Ligoure<sup>2, 3

1</sup>  Groupe Théorie (UMR 5819 (CEA-CNRS-Univ. J. Fourier)) , SI3M, Département de Recherche Fondamentale sur la Matière Condensée, CEA-Grenoble, 38054 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
²  Laboratoire CNRS (UMR 167) , Elf Atochem, BP 108, 92303 Levallois-Perret Cedex, France
³  GDPC CC 26, Université Montpellier 2, 34095 Montpellier Cedex 05, France

mmanghi@cea.fr

(Received 14 February 2001)

Abstract
Inwardly curved polymer brushes are present in cylindrical and spherical micelles or in membranes tubes and vesicles decorated with anchored polymers, and influence their stability. We consider such polymer brushes in good solvent and show that previous works, based on a self-similar concentric structure of the brush, do not describe the most stable structure. We use scaling laws to derive very simply the leading term of the free energy in the high curvature limit, where the osmotic pressure is the relevant physical ingredient. We also derive the complete conformation at all curvatures using a self-consistent field approach. The free energy is computed therefrom using a local scaling description

PACS
36.20.Ey - Conformations (statistics and dynamics).
82.35.Gh - Polymers on surfaces, adhesion.
82.70.-y - Disperse systems; complex fluids.


© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2001