Polymer chains in confined geometries: Massive field theory approach

Abstract

The massive field theory approach in fixed space dimensions $d=3$ is applied to investigate a dilute solution of long-flexible polymer chains in a good solvent between two parallel repulsive walls, two inert walls and for the mixed case of one inert and one repulsive wall. The well known correspondence between the field theoretical ${\varphi }^4$ O(n)-vector model in the limit $n\to 0$ and the behavior of long-flexible polymer chains in a good solvent is used to calculate the depletion interaction potential and the depletion force up to one-loop order. Our investigations include modification of renormalization scheme for the case of two inert walls. The obtained results confirm that the depletion interaction potential and the resulting depletion force between two repulsive walls are weaker for chains with excluded volume interaction (EVI) than for ideal chains, because the EVI effectively reduces the depletion effect near the walls. Our results are in qualitative agreement with previous theoretical investigations, experimental results and with results of Monte Carlo simulations.

18 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Massive Field-Theory Approach to Surface Critical Behavior in Three-Dimensional Systems
• Polymers Confined between Two Parallel Plane Walls
• Thermodynamic Casimir effects involving interacting field theories with zero modes
• Polymer depletion interaction between two parallel repulsive walls
• Field theoretical analysis of adsorption of polymer chains at surfaces: Critical exponents and Scaling

Cited by in corpus (4)

• On the size and shape of excluded volume polymers confined between parallel plates
• Universal amplitude in density-force relations for polymer chains in confined geometries: Massive field theory approach
• Ring polymers in confined geometries
• Entropic force in a dilute solution of real ring polymer chains with different topological structures in a slit of two parallel walls with mixed boundary conditions