Systematic Microcanonical Analyses of Polymer Adsorption Transitions

TL;DR

This paper uses microcanonical analysis of Monte Carlo simulations to reveal that finite-length polymers exhibit first-order-like adsorption transitions with phase coexistence and temperature anomalies, highlighting the importance of surface-entropic effects.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed microcanonical analysis of polymer adsorption, showing finite-size effects and convex entropy signatures indicating first-order-like transitions.

Findings

Convex microcanonical entropy indicates first-order-like transition.

Finite polymers show phase coexistence of adsorbed and desorbed states.

Transition involves a decrease in microcanonical temperature with increasing energy.

Abstract

In detailed microcanonical analyses of densities of states obtained by extensive multicanonical Monte Carlo computer simulations, we investigate the caloric properties of conformational transitions adsorbing polymers experience near attractive substrates. For short chains and strong surface attraction, the microcanonical entropy turns out to be a convex function of energy in the transition regime, indicating that surface-entropic effects are relevant. Albeit known to be a continuous transition in the thermodynamic limit of infinitely long chains, the adsorption transition of nongrafted finite-length polymers thus exhibits a clear signature of a first-order-like transition, with coexisting phases of adsorbed and desorbed conformations. Another remarkable consequence of the convexity of the microcanonical entropy is that the transition is accompanied by a decrease of the microcanonical temperature with increasing energy. Since this is a characteristic physical effect it might not be ignored in analyses of cooperative macrostate transitions in finite systems.