Eur. Phys. J. E (2013) 36: 56
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2013-13056-5

Regular Article

Brownian dynamics simulations of confined tethered polymers in shear flow: the effect of attractive surfaces

¹ Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 04510, México D.F, México
² H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, BS8 1TL, Bristol, UK

^* e-mail: ibaga@ciencias.unam.mx

Received: 3 July 2012
Revised: 4 December 2012
Accepted: 7 May 2013
Published online: 30 May 2013

Abstract

Coarse grain Brownian dynamics simulations of the bead-spring model are used to investigate the effect of attractive surfaces on the stretching of confined tethered polymers under shear flow. The weak and strong adsorbed regimes have been addressed by means of a coarse grain van der Waals potential to simulate polymer substrate interactions. Different stationary cyclic dynamics are observed upon varying shear flow intensity and surface potential strength. Polymer stretching decreases as increasing the attractive potential strength, breaking down the scaling predictions for non-adsorbed polymers. We found that adsorption is enhanced by the shear flow strength in agreement to simulations of adsorbed non-tethered polymers.