Neutral and charged polymers at interfaces

By R. Netz, D. Andelman. 2002

589 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Chain-like macromolecules (polymers) show characteristic adsorption properties due to their flexibility and internal degrees of freedom, when attracted to surfaces and interfaces. In this review we discuss concepts and features that are relevant to the adsorption of neutral and charged polymers at equilibrium, including the type of polymer/surface interaction, the solvent quality, the characteristics of the surface, and the polymer structure. We pay special attention to the case of charged polymers (polyelectrolytes) that have a special importance due to their water solubility. We present a summary of recent progress in this rapidly evolving field. Because many experimental studies are performed with rather stiff biopolymers, we discuss in detail the case of semi-flexible polymers in addition to flexible ones. We first review the behavior of neutral and charged chains in solution. Then, the adsorption of a single polymer chain is considered. Next, the adsorption and depletion processes in the many-chain case are reviewed. Profiles, changes in the surface tension and polymer surface excess are presented. Mean-field and corrections due to fluctuations and lateral correlations are discussed. The force of interaction between two adsorbed layers, which is important in understanding colloidal stability, is characterized. The behavior of grafted polymers is also reviewed, both for neutral and charged polymer brushes.

Subfields: Molecular Medicine, Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, Surfaces, Coatings and Films

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0814e1cff86b4c38270db30e0daa9895d162e01e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Molecular Medicine

1. S. Minko
2. J. Genzer

In Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

1. A. Dobrynin
2. S. Minko
3. M. Rubinstein
4. Marcus Müller

In Surfaces, Coatings and Films

1. S. Minko
2. J. Genzer
3. V. Tsukruk
4. A. Dobrynin
5. Gleb B. Sukhorukov
6. M. Rubinstein
7. I. Luzinov
8. A. Fery

Citations in the corpus

• Emerging applications of stimuli-responsive polymer materials. (2010, background): “Also, the incorporation of electrostatic interactions within a mean-field approach can be problematic in some regime”
• Water-soluble functional polymers in conjunction with membranes to remove pollutant ions from aqueous solutions (2011, background): “Adsorption of highly charged WSP on highly charged surfaces of the same charge is hindered by electrostatic repulsion, although this can be moderated by adding multivalent metal ions [113–116].”
• Polymers with spatial or topological constraints: Theoretical and computational results (2011, background): “It would be interesting to examine how the entanglement of the rings is affected by extending the range of the attractive potential [171];”
• Theory of polyelectrolytes in solutions and at surfaces (2005, background): “Adsorption of charged polymers on charged surfaces and interfaces is a classical problem of polymer physics and has been under extensive theoretical and experimental studies for the last four decades [63,169–173].”