Related papers: Interdigitation between surface-anchored polymer c…
We study the friction between a flat solid surface where polymer chains have been end-grafted and a cross-linked elastomer at low sliding velocity. The contribution of isolated grafted chains' penetration in the sliding elastomer has been…
We study the friction of a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) rubber network sliding, at low velocity, on a substrate on which PDMS chains are end-tethered. We thus clearly evidence the contribution to friction of the pull-out mechanism of…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked elastomer networks with liquid crystal mesogens incorporated into the main or side chain. Polydomain liquid crystalline (nematic) elastomers exhibit unusual mechanical properties like soft…
In this paper, we study the equilibrium properties of polymer chains end-tethered to a fluid membrane. The loss of conformational entropy of the polymer results in an inhomogeneous pressure field that we calculate for gaussian chains. We…
The adhesion between a polymer melt and substrate is studied in the presence of chemically attached chains on the substrate surface. Extensive molecular dynamics simulations have been carried out to study the effect of temperature, tethered…
The results obtained from molecular dynamics simulations of the friction at an interface between polymer melts and weakly attractive crystalline surfaces are reported. We consider a coarse-grained bead-spring model of linear chains with…
We propose that several mechanisms contribute to friction in a polymer melt adsorbed at a structured surface. The first one is the well known disentanglement of bulk polymer chains from the surface layer. However, if the surface is ideal at…
We study the adsorption of polymer chains on a fluctuating surface. Physical examples are provided by polymer adsorption at the rough interface between two non-miscible liquids, or on a membrane. In a mean-field approach, we find that the…
In this paper we present simulations of a surface-adsorbed polymer subject to an elongation force. The polymer is modelled by a self-avoiding walk on a regular lattice. It is confined to a half-space by an adsorbing surface with attractions…
Adhesion control at the interface of two surfaces is crucial in various applications, including the design of micro- and nanodevices such as microfluidic devices, triboelectric nanogenerators, biochips, and electronic sensors. Several…
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 dynamics of a single chain tethered to an interface and in contact with a cross-linked network is examined numerically. When the network is put in contact with the tethered chain, the chain moves with dynamics that are highly…
This chapter deals with various aspects related to the adsorption of long chain-like macromolecules (polymers) onto solid surfaces. Physical aspects of the adsorption mechanism are elaborated mainly at thermodynamical equilibrium. The basic…
We investigate the folding and forced-unbinding transitions of adsorbed semiflexible polymer chains using theory and simulations. These processes describe biologically relevant phenomena that include adhesive interactions between proteins…
We explore the effect of an attractive interaction between parallel-aligned polymers, which are perpendicularly grafted on a substrate. Such an attractive interaction could be due to, e.g., reversible cross-links. The competition between…
The adhesive contact between elastic solids with randomly rough, self affine fractal surfaces is studied by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The interfacial binding energy obtained from the simulations of nominally flat and curved…
Various adhesion mechanisms that have been understood in the field of synthetic adhesives are described and these are linked with situations relevant to fouling issues. The review mainly deals with mechanical aspects of adhesion phenomena,…
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…
Understanding and mitigating the failure of reinforced elastomers has been a long-standing challenge in many industrial applications. In an early attempt to shed light on the fundamental mechanisms of failure, Gent and Park presented a…
Polymer brushes, coatings consisting of densely grafted macromolecules, experience an intrinsic lateral compressive pressure, originating from chain elasticity and excluded volume interactions. This lateral pressure complicates a proper…