Interaction between grafted polymeric brushes

The authors present the results of a molecular dynamics simulation of grafted brushes. They study systems of polymers on N statistical units grafted at an average surface density ρa, with N between 10 and 150 and ρa between 0.01 and 0.2 with the distances measured in units of σ which is roughly the average distance between successive monomers along the chain. The system is in good solvent conditions and the wall has a short range repulsive interaction with the monomers except for the attached end monomer. The authors find that the free and end of the polymer is not excluded from regions near the surface. The distribution of the free ends as a function of the distance from the surface is also found to be in agreement with the SCF theory of S.T. Milner et al for the cases in which the parabolic density profile is valid.