Grafted polymers in bad solvents: octopus surface micelles

Abstract

Polymer chains are irreversibly grafted to a surface in a good solvent and the solvent quality is then reduced dramatically. The chains then collapse. If the grafting density is very high then the collapsed layer should be fairly uniform. However, at lower grafting densities the chains are predicted to form surface «micelles». These micelles minimize the exposed surface area of the collapsed globules at the expense of chain stretching energy. We also discuss grafting to a line and to a three dimensional network