The term polymer brush refers to the class of structures formed by polymers when attached to a surface at sufficiently high surface density so as to cause the polymers to stretch away from the surface to avoid each other. Considering specifically brushes formed by flexible, linear homopolymers attached by a single end to an impenetrable planar surface, this thesis investigates the stability of the laterally homogeneous phase of the brush in response to fluctuations of polymer density. The controlling factors studied are: the energetic interactions of the polymers with the bath of solvent particles in which the brush is immersed; the excluded volume of the polymers, which results from the mutual repulsion that exists between any two polymer segments; and the polymeric content in the brush, controlled by the grafting density and the length of the polymers. It is found that the stability of the laterally homogeneous phase of the brush is enhanced by increasing the polymer excluded volume, the polymeric content in the brush, or both. When incompressibility is modeled at the mean field level, it is found that there exists a region of parameter space in which the laterally homogeneous phase is stable for all values of the polymer-solvent interaction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.85644 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Roderick, Christopher |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Physics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002223822, proquestno: AAINR12938, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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