Interaction of a polymer chain with an asymmetric liquid–liquid interface

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Abstract
A continuum model is presented for polymer chains near an asymmetric (A–B) liquid–liquid interface where each side of the interface can have different polymer–surface interactions. For example, one side can attract the macromolecule, while the other can repel it. The model contains different monomer free energies and different excluded volume interactions for the macromolecule in the two solvents. The model is solved exactly in the ideal limit where excluded volume vanishes in order to illustrate qualitatively the wide range of possible behavior. We evaluate the fixed end-vector distribution, some moments of this distribution, and discuss other distributions and several interesting limiting cases. This rich model is constructed based on physical considerations and on consistency requirements which are imposed on any zeroth-order model when it is used in conjunction with renormalization group methods to incorporate the excluded volume interactions.

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