2017 CAP Congress / Congrès de l'ACP 2017

Entropic segregation of short chains to the surface of a polydisperse melt

29 May 2017, 13:30

15m

BioSci 1102 (Queen's University)

CLOSED - Oral (Student, In Competition) / Orale (Étudiant(e), inscrit à la compétition) Condensed Matter and Materials Physics / Physique de la matière condensée et matériaux (DCMMP-DPMCM) M3-1 Soft Matter (DCMMP/SMC17) | Matière molle (DPMCM/MMC17)

Speaker

Ms Pendar Mahmoudi (University of Waterloo)

Description

It is well understood that chains ends have an entropic preference for the surface of a polymer melt, and consequently the shorter chains of a polydisperse melt are favored at the surface. We study this effect for a bidisperse melt using numerical self-consistent field theory (SCFT). Semi-analytical approximations to the SCFT are derived for the concentration profiles resulting in simple expressions for the integrated excess or depletion of each component.