A model ladder polymer physisorbed on a Lennard‐Jones surface

Abstract

AbstractThe ladder or band polymer considered here differs from “ordinary” main chain polymers through its strongly elongated cross section as opposed to the usually assumed cylindrical cross section of the latter. This cross sectional shape anisotropy and the attendant anisotropy of the bending stiffness give rise to a competition between the polymer's adsorption energy and its undulation entropy. Following the self‐consistent field approach the present work studies the effects due to this competition in terms of the orientation order parameter of the ladder plane and the normal distribution of the polymer with respect to a smooth Lennard‐Jones surface. In particular, we show that it is possible to induce abrupt orientation changes of the ladder‐plane by only slight variations of the torsion and bending persistence lengths of the polymer or the polymer‐surface interaction.