How irreversible adsorption affects interfacial properties of polymers.

ABSTRACT

Growing experimental evidence shows that the behavior of polymer chains confined at the nanoscale level strongly depends on the degree of adsorption correlated to the number density of monomers pinned onto the supporting substrate. In this contribution, after introducing the physics behind the mechanisms of irreversible adsorption, we review recent experimental observations on how adsorption affects properties of polymer melts confined in 1D, focusing on those related to the thermal glass transition, maximum water uptake, viscosity and crystallization. These findings strongly support a new physical framework of confined soft matter, not trivially limited to finite size effects and interfacial interactions, but also enriched by non-equilibrium phenomena.