Interfacial Instability of Charged End-Group Polymer Brushes

Details Interfacial Instability of Charged End-Group Polymer Brushes Interfacial Instability of Charged End-Group Polymer Brushes

2008-01-22

arxiv.org/abs/0801.3318v1

Europhys. Lett. 82, 46001 (2008)

Physics

Condensed Matter

Soft Condensed Matter

6 pages, 3 figures

Scientific paper

10.1209/0295-5075/82/46001

We consider a polymer brush grafted to a surface (acting as an electrode) and bearing a charged group at its free end. Using a second distant electrode, the brush is subject to a constant electric field. Based on a coarse-grained continuum model, we calculate the average brush height and find that the brush can stretch or compress depending on the applied field and charge end-group. We further look at an undulation mode of the flat polymer brush and find that the electrostatic energy scales linearly with the undulation wavenumber, $q$. Competition with surface tension, scaling as $q^2$, tends to stabilize a lateral $q$-mode of the polymer brush with a well-defined wavelength. This wavelength depends on the brush height, surface separation, and several system parameters.

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