The Monte Carlo dynamics of polymer chains in sandwich brushes

We designed and developed a simple model of polymer chains. The chains consist of identical united atoms (segments) and were restricted to a simple cubic lattice with the excluded volume interactions only (an athermal system).The polymers were confined between two parallel impenetrable walls with one end of each chain was grafted to the wall. A motion of a probe single linear chain in such environment was studied. The properties of the model studied were determined from the Monte Carlo simulations employing a Metropolis-like sampling algorithm with local changes of chains’ conformation. The influence of the system density and the length of chains on the polymer mobility was studied and discussed. We found that the number of chains forming the brush was the major quantity which governed the dynamics of a probe chain, while the length of the chains in the brush also influenced the diffusivity of the probe chain. The diffusion coefficients scaled with the length of a probe chain is stronger than in the Rouse model with the exponent γ = −1.3.