Pulling adsorbed self-avoiding walks from a surface

Abstract

We consider a self-avoiding walk model of polymer adsorption where the adsorbed polymer can be desorbed by the application of a force, concentrating on the case of the square lattice. Using series analysis methods we investigate the behaviour of the free energy of the system when there is an attractive potential $\epsilon$ with the surface and a force $f$ applied at the last vertex, normal to the surface, and extract the phase boundary between the ballistic and adsorbed phases. We believe this to be exact to graphical accuracy. We give precise estimates of the location of the transition from the free phase to the ballistic phase, which we find to be at $y_c=\exp (f/k_B{T}_c)=1$, and from the free phase to the adsorbed phase, which we estimate to be at $a_c=\exp (-\epsilon /k_B{T}_c)=1.775615\pm 0.000005$. In addition we prove that the phase transition from the ballistic to the adsorbed phase is first order.

18 pages, 6 figures. Minor revisions added in second version

References in corpus (5)

• A new transfer-matrix algorithm for exact enumerations: Self-avoiding polygons on the square lattice
• Force-induced desorption of a linear polymer chain adsorbed on an attractive surface
• Two-dimensional self-avoiding walks and polymer adsorption: Critical fugacity estimates
• Exactly solved models of polyominoes and polygons
• A new transfer-matrix algorithm for exact enumerations: self-avoiding walks on the square lattice

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Compressed self-avoiding walks, bridges and polygons
• Self-avoiding walks adsorbed at a surface and pulled at their mid-point
• Self-avoiding walks subject to a force
• The critical pulling force for self-avoiding walks
• Self-avoiding walks and connective constants in clustered scale-free networks
• Square lattice self-avoiding walks and biased differential approximants
• Force-induced desorption of uniform branched polymers
• Polygons pulled from an adsorbing surface
• Self-avoiding walks adsorbed at a surface and subject to a force
• A solvable non-directed model of polymer adsorption
• Adsorbing staircase polygons subject to a force
• Force-induced desorption of $3$-star polymers: a self-avoiding walk model
• Force-induced desorption of uniform block copolymers
• Self-avoiding walks pulled at an angle