Confinement and compression of an oligomer brush

Self-assembled monolayers and oligomer brushes confined between two parallel plates show compressional forces that are nonmonotonic as a function of plate separation. In a realistic model of short alkanethiols, based on the rotationally isomeric state model with parameters from ab initio calculation...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biointerphases 2010-06, Vol.5 (2), p.69-73
Main Authors: Foster, Stephen, Wainwright, Christopher, Staple, Douglas B, Kreuzer, Hans Jürgen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decanoates - chemistry
Models, Biological
Models, Chemical
Polymers - chemistry
Sulfhydryl Compounds - chemistry
Surface Properties
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Self-assembled monolayers and oligomer brushes confined between two parallel plates show compressional forces that are nonmonotonic as a function of plate separation. In a realistic model of short alkanethiols, based on the rotationally isomeric state model with parameters from ab initio calculations, the authors show that nonmonotonic forces arise from the elimination of longer conformers as the distance between the plates is reduced. This nonmonotonicity is a size effect that disappears when the length of the polymer molecule is sufficiently increased. An analytical model is developed that allows experimentalists to extract energy-averaged brush height distributions from compressional force curves.
ISSN:1934-8630
1559-4106
DOI:10.1116/1.3455152