Adsorption of a wormlike polymer in a potential well near a hard wall: Crossover between two scaling regimes

Abstract

We consider the adsorption of a semiflexible wormlike polymer to the surface of a flat wall by a square potential well of width W and depth v. Using a wormlike chain formalism that couples the orientational and positional degrees of freedom, for a wormlike chain much longer than the persistence length, we numerically calculate the adsorption phase diagram and analyze the scaling behavior near the phase transition. Our numerical results over a wide range of W can be used to identify scaling behaviors valid in the large and small width-to-persistence-length ratio as well as near the adsorption phase transition.