Polymer melt confined between two plates

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Abstract
A polymer melt confined between two parallel plates with a finite size and a distance D between them is considered. The polymer is free to exchange with a bulk reservoir. When D is smaller than the unperturbed size Rf of the chains, then they are squeezed and the number of their accessible configurations is reduced. Consequently, each of them experiences a confinement entropy loss ΔS1, which is shown to depend on D as 1/D. Since the number n of confined chains is proportional to D, the total entropy of confinement n . Δ S1 of the trapped polymer is independent of D. Therefore, the deformation of the chains does not induce any long range interaction between the plates. The demonstration is based on a detailed description of the configurations of the trapped chains, which appear as a succession of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional random walks. Their end to end distance is a function of D. The case of impenetrable walls is thoroughly examined. Polymer configurations are then identical to those of ideal chains in presence of two adsorbing plates when the adsorption energy per monomer is the critical energy for adsorption

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