Surface Waves on Polymer Brushes

Abstract

We present a simple analytical method to study the deformation behavior of a grafted melt polymer brush. We calculate the change in the free energy associated with (1) small-amplitude deformations of the free surface, (2) nonuniformity in the areal density of grafted chains, and (3) deformations of the grafting surface. We obtain the same results as Fredrickson et al.4 for long-wavelength surface modes of melt brushes if we make their approximation that all the chain free ends reside at the surface. Our method can be applied to a wide range of problems, such as the deformation of cylindrical or spherical micelles.