Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 23: Interfaces and Thin Films III

CPP 23.4: Talk

Tuesday, April 1, 2014, 15:45–16:00, ZEU 114

Confined semiflexible chains in a good solvent: A Monte Carlo test of scaling concepts — •Hsiao-Ping Hsu^1,2 and Kurt Binder² — ¹Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung, Mainz, Germany — ²Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany

Single semiflexible polymer chains under good solvent conditions are described by self-avoiding walks (SAWs) on the square and simple cubic lattices with an additional bending energy penalty ε_b at each 90^o kink along the chains. Employing the pruned-enriched Rosenbluth method (PERM), chain lengths of polymers confined in nanoslits between two hard walls that are apart from each other at a distance D are up to 10⁵ [1,2]. With our large-scale Monte Carlo simulations of confined semiflexible chains, the scaling laws predicted in Flory, Daoud-de Gennes, and Odijk regimes are checked. While under weak confinement (D ≫ l_p) the model (for very long chains) still is compatible with the Daoud-de Gennes scaling theory, for strong confinement (D ≤ l_p) strong deviations from the predictions based on the Kratky-Porod model are found. However, Odijk’s deflection length plays no role for semiflexible chains with discrete bond angles.

[1] H.-P. Hsu and K. Binder, Soft Matter 9, 10512 (2013).

[2] H.-P. Hsu and K. Binder, Macromolecules 46, 8017 (2013).