Characteristics of driven polymer surfaces: Growth and roughness

Using a Monte Carlo simulation, the growth and roughness characteristics of polymer surfaces are studied in 2+1 dimensions. Kink-jump and reptation dy namics are used to move polymer chains under a driving field where they dep osit onto an impenetrable attractive wall. Effects of field (E), chain leng th (L-c), and the substrate size (L) on the growing surfaces are studied. I n low field, the interface width (W) shows a crossover from one power-law g rowth in time (W similar to t(beta 1)) to another (W similar to t(beta 2)), before reaching its asymptotic value (W-s), with beta(1)(similar to 0.5+/- 0.1)< beta(2)(similar to 0.6-1.0). For short chain lengths (L-c=4), the sat urated width (W-s) is independent of the substrate length (L), while for lo ng chain lengths, W-s, decays with L, before becoming independent at large L. W-s depends strongly on the magnitude of the field: for short chains, W( s)similar to E-delta with delta similar or equal to 0.4, while for long cha ins, it varies nonmonotonically with E.