Adsorption of branched polymers at surfaces: scaling and Monte Carlo analysis

Abstract

Using Monte Carlo method, the authors calculate the specific heat of branched polymers near a hard wall in the presence of a short-range attractive force between monomers and the wall. The specific heat exhibits a peak at a temperature Tm(N) depending on the size of the polymer N. Both Tm(N) and the height of the peak increase monotonically with N. The result agrees very well with a scaling function for the specific heat derived from a scaling analysis in analogy with linear polymers. In addition, the scaling analysis yields the adsorption temperature Ta approximately=0.583 and the crossover exponent phi approximately=0.714.