Thermodynamics of polymer adsorption to a flexible membrane
Abstract
We analyze the structural behavior of a single polymer chain grafted to an attractive, flexible surface. Our model is composed of a coarse-grained bead-and-spring polymer and a tethered membrane. By means of extensive parallel tempering Monte Carlo simulations it is shown that the system exhibits a rich phase behavior ranging from highly ordered, compact to extended random coil structures and from desorbed to completely adsorbed or even partially embedded conformations. These findings are summarized in a pseudophase diagram indicating the predominant class of conformations as a function of the external parameters temperature and polymer-membrane interaction strength. By comparison with adsorption to a stiff membrane surface it is shown that the flexibility of the membrane gives rise to qualitatively new behavior such as stretching of adsorbed conformations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1109.5077,
title = {Thermodynamics of polymer adsorption to a flexible membrane},
author = {Steffen Karalus and Wolfhard Janke and Michael Bachmann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.5077},
year = {2011}
}