1 research outputs found
Polymers grafted to porous membranes
We study a single flexible chain molecule grafted to a membrane which has
pores of size slightly larger than the monomer size. On both sides of the
membrane there is the same solvent. When this solvent is good, i.e. when the
polymer is described by a self avoiding walk, it can fairly easily penetrate
the membrane, so that the average number of membrane crossings tends, for chain
length , to a positive constant. The average numbers of monomers on
either side of the membrane diverges in this limit, although their ratio
becomes infinite. For a poor solvent, in contrast, the entire polymer is
located, for large , on one side of the membrane. For good and for theta
solvents (ideal polymers) we find scaling laws, whose exponents can in the
latter case be easily understood from the behaviour of random walks.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure