Roughening, deroughening, and nonuniversal scaling of the interface width in electrophoretic deposition of polymer chains

Abstract

Growth and roughness of the interface of deposited polymer chains driven by a field onto an impenetrable adsorbing surface are studied by computer simulations in (2+1) dimensions. The evolution of the interface width W shows a crossover from short-time growth described by the exponent beta1 to a long-time growth with exponent beta2 (>beta1). The saturated width increases, i.e., the interface roughens, with the molecular weight Lc, but the roughness exponent alpha (from Ws~L^alpha) becomes negative in contrast to models for particle deposition; alpha depends on the chain length--a nonuniversal scaling with the substrate length L. Roughening and deroughening occur as the field E and the temperature T compete such that Ws=(A+BT)E^-1/2.

5 pages, 5 figures, RevTex

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Thin film growth by random deposition of linear polymers on a square lattice
• Interface relaxation in electrophoretic deposition of polymer chains: Effects of segmental dynamics, molecular weight, and field
• Density and conformation with relaxed substrate, bulk, and interface electrophoretic deposition of polymer chains
• Thermal Roughening and Deroughening at Polymer Interfaces in Electrophoretic Deposition