Structural behavior of a polymer chain inside an attractive sphere

Abstract

We analyze the structural behavior of a single polymer chain inside an attractive sphere. Our model is composed of a coarse-grained polymer and an attractive-sphere potential. By means of extensive multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations, it is shown that the system exhibits a rich phase diagram ranging from highly ordered compact to extended random coil structures and from desorbed to partially or even completely adsorbed conformations. These findings are identified with different structural observables.