Eur. Phys. J. E (2012) 35: 97
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2012-12097-6

Regular Article

Structure and dynamics of a polymer melt at an attractive surface

¹ Max Planck Institut für Polymerforschung, Ackermannweg 10, D-55128, Mainz, Germany
² Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquimicas Teoricas y Aplicadas, C.C. 16 Suc. 4, 1900, La Plata, Argentina
³ Institute for Physical Chemistry, Bulgarian Academy of Science, 1113, Sofia, Bulgaria

^* e-mail: adevir@inifta.unlp.edu.ar

Received: 25 October 2011
Revised: 6 March 2012
Accepted: 24 August 2012
Published online: 28 September 2012

Abstract

We study the structural and dynamic properties of a polymer melt in the vicinity of an adhesive solid substrate by means of Molecular Dynamics simulation at various degrees of surface adhesion. The properties of the individual polymer chains are examined as a 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 the macromolecule length as , regardless of the 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.