Issue 5, 2011
From the journal:

Soft Matter

Semiflexible magnetic filaments near attractive flat surfaces: a Langevin dynamics study

Pedro A. Sánchez,*a   Juan J. Cerdà,*ab   Vincent Ballenegger,c   Tomás Sintes,a   Oreste Piro*d  and  Christian Holmb  

* Corresponding authors

a Instituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos, IFISC (CSIC-UIB), Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain
E-mail: pedro@ifisc.uib-csic.es

b Institute for Computational Physics, Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
E-mail: joan@ifisc.uib-csic.es

c Institut UTINAM. Université de Franche-Comté, CNRS. 16, route de Gray, Besançon cedex France

d Departamento de Física, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain
E-mail: piro@ifisc.uib-csic.es

Abstract

The adsorption of stiff magnetic filaments close to an attractive surface is studied thoroughly via extensive Langevin dynamics simulations (LD). Magnetic filaments are represented by a coarse-grained bead-spring model where each bead bears a point dipole located at its center and the excluded volume interaction is introduced via a soft-core repulsive potential. We find strong evidence for the existence of two transitions as the temperature is lowered. First, the system undergoes a continuum phase transition from the desorbed to the adsorbed state. This transition is followed by a second structural transition that takes place when the filaments are already adsorbed. The adsorption transition is found to be very similar to the one observed for stiff non-magnetic polymer chains [Sintes et al., Macromolecules 2001, 34, 1352–1357] where the chain bending interaction plays a similar role as the magnetic component of the present case. However, the tendency of the magnetic chains to stretch is reversed by a further reduction in temperature and the chains tend to form closed adsorbed loops leading to a second structural transition. A representation of the phase diagram for the adsorption of magnetic filaments is determined here for the first time. We also present a novel way to determine the temperature at which the chain is adsorbed that is based on the analysis of the change in the number of trains, tails and loops developed by the polymer chain during the adsorption process.

Graphical abstract: Semiflexible magnetic filaments near attractive flat surfaces: a Langevin dynamics study

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C0SM00772B
Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 Aug 2010
Accepted
28 Oct 2010
First published
21 Dec 2010

Soft Matter, 2011,7, 1809-1818

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Semiflexible magnetic filaments near attractive flat surfaces: a Langevin dynamics study

P. A. Sánchez, J. J. Cerdà, V. Ballenegger, T. Sintes, O. Piro and C. Holm, Soft Matter, 2011, 7, 1809 DOI: 10.1039/C0SM00772B

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