A Unifying Framework to Quantify the Effects of Substrate Interactions, Stiffness, and Roughness on the Dynamics of Thin Supported Polymer Films

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to understand how substrate interactions, roughness, and stiffness affect the dynamics of supported polymer films, revealing a unified model based on string-like cooperative motions.

Contribution

It introduces a unifying framework that quantitatively links substrate effects, roughness, and stiffness to polymer film dynamics through a string model approach.

Findings

All variables significantly influence film dynamics.

String length correlates with structural relaxation.

Activation parameters depend predictably on substrate and thickness.

Abstract

Changes in the dynamics of supported polymer films in comparison to bulk materials involve a complex convolution of effects, such as substrate interactions, roughness and compliance, in addition to film thickness. We consider molecular dynamics simulations of substrate-supported, coarse-grained polymer films where these parameters are tuned separately to determine how each of these variables influence the molecular dynamics of thin polymer films. We find that all these variables significantly influence the film dynamics, leading to a seemingly intractable degree of complexity in describing these changes. However, by considering how these constraining variables influence string-like collective motion within the film, we show that all our observations can be understood in a unified and quantitative way. More specifically, the string model for glass-forming liquids implies that the changes in the structural relaxation of these films are governed by the changes in the average length of string-like cooperative motions and this model is confirmed under all conditions considered in our simulations. Ultimately, these changes are parameterized in terms of just the activation enthalpy and entropy for molecular organization, which have predictable dependences on substrate properties and film thickness, offering a promising approach for the rational design of film properties.