English

Monolayers of Diblock Copolymer at the Air-Water Interface: The Attractive Monomer-Surface Case

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-10-30 v1 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We have studied both experimentally and theoretically the surface pressure isotherms of copolymers of polystyrene-polyethyleneoxide (PS-PEO) at the air-water interface. The SCMF (single chain mean-field) theory provides a very good agreement with the experiments for the entire range of surface densities and shows that the adsorption energy per PEO monomer at the air-water interface is about one kBTk_B T. In addition, the chain density profile has been calculated for a variety of surface densities, from the dilute to the very dense ones. The SCMF approach has been complemented by a mean-field approach in the low density regime, where the PEO chains act as a two-dimensional layer. Both theoretical calculations agree with the experiments in this region.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9706249,
  title  = {Monolayers of Diblock Copolymer at the Air-Water Interface: The Attractive Monomer-Surface Case},
  author = {M. C. Fauré and P. Bassereau and M. A. Carignano and I. Szleifer and Y. Gallot and D. Andelman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9706249},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

11 pages, 8 figures, 1 table