Print Email Facebook Twitter Near-second-order transition in confined living-polymer solutions Title Near-second-order transition in confined living-polymer solutions Author Korobko, A.V. (TU Delft OLD ChemE/Organic Materials and Interfaces) Besseling, N.A.M. (TU Delft OLD ChemE/Organic Materials and Interfaces) Date 2016-03-28 Abstract We analyze a near-second-order transition occurring in solutions of living polymers confined by two parallel surfaces in equilibrium with a reservoir solution. The molecular self-consistent field theory in the regime of weak adsorption or depletion is mapped to phenomenological Landau theory, where the order parameter is the average degree of polymerization or, equivalently, the normalized chain-end concentration. The distance between two surfaces at which the transition occurs scales as c2|c| where c is the correlation length of the polymer solution in the reservoir and c-1 is de Gennes adsorption length. In the second half of the paper we focus on experimentally observable features. The predicted transition can be detected experimentally by probing the living-polymer mediated disjoining potential between surfaces by means of, e.g., colloidal probe atomic force microscopy. To facilitate experimental investigations we derive simple explicit expressions for the disjoining potential for several regimes. By comparison with full numerical calculations it was verified that these are quite accurate. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:8288f221-7d17-4077-8f6f-1c28f9cc8a15 DOI https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.93.032507 ISSN 1539-3755 Source Physical Review E (Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics), 93 (3), 1-7 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2016 A.V. Korobko, N.A.M. Besseling Files PDF PhysRevE.93.032507.pdf 400.94 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:8288f221-7d17-4077-8f6f-1c28f9cc8a15/datastream/OBJ/view