STATISTICAL THERMODYNAMICS OF POLYMER LAYERS

According to scaling theory, adsorbed homopolymer layers split up into a proximal, a central and a distal region. This picture is recovered in numerical self-consistent-field (SCF) calculations. Analytical trea tments of the loop and tail contributions in various regimes, from dil ute to concentrated, are now available. For polymer brushes, lull conv ergence between SCF scaling, and simulations exists. Brush theory, how ever, is far ahead of experiments. A recent unified scaling analysis o f polymer layers, based upon the loop distribution, captures both adso rbed layers in various conditions as well as polymer brushes with and without adsorption energy and irreversibly bound polymer. This promisi ng approach awaits further examination.