Wetting transitions of polymer solutions: Effects of chain length and chain stiffness

Abstract

Wetting and drying phenomena are studied for flexible and semiflexible polymer solutions via coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations and density functional theory calculations. The study is based on the use of Young's equation for the contact angle, determining all relevant surface tensions from the anisotropy of the pressure tensor. The solvent quality (or effective temperature, equivalently) is varied systematically, while all other interactions remain unaltered. For flexible polymers, the wetting transition temperature $T_{\mathrm{w}}$ increases monotonically with chain length $N$, while the contact angle at temperatures far below $T_{\mathrm{w}}$ is independent of $N$. For semiflexible polymer solutions, $T_{\mathrm{w}}$ varies non-monotonically with the persistence length: Initially, $T_{\mathrm{w}}$ increases with increasing chain stiffness and reaches a maximum, but then a sudden drop of $T_{\mathrm{w}}$ is observed, which is associated with the isotropic-nematic transition of the system.

References in corpus (4)

• A unified description of hydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces in terms of the wetting and drying transitions of liquids
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• When does Wenzel's extension of Young's equation for the contact angle of droplets apply? A density functional study
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Cell-sized confinements alter molecular diffusion in concentrated polymer solutions due to length-dependent wetting of polymers
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