English

Pulling adsorbed polymers from surfaces with the AFM: stick versus slip, peeling versus gliding

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-11 v1 Other Condensed Matter

Abstract

We consider the response of an adsorbed polymer that is pulled by an AFM within a simple geometric framework. We separately consider the cases of i) fixed polymer-surface contact point, ii) sticky case where the polymer is peeled off from the substrate, and iii) slippery case where the polymer glides over the surface. The resultant behavior depends on the value of the surface friction coefficient and the adsorption strength. Our resultant force profiles in principle allow to extract both from non-equilibrium force-spectroscopic data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0511583,
  title  = {Pulling adsorbed polymers from surfaces with the AFM: stick versus slip, peeling versus gliding},
  author = {Andreas Serr and Roland R. Netz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0511583},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in Europhys. Lett., http://www.edpsciences.org/journal/index.cfm?edpsname=epl