Effects of Confinement on Tethered Chains

Density Functional Theory (DFT) is used to analyze tethered Bead-Spring Chains. Previous work has demonstrated the ability of DFT to accurately predict both the density profiles of and colloidal force generated by such chains as compared to the results of computer simulation. In addition, the chains are found to display a collapse transition as a function of either surface coverage or temperature. In the current work, we explore the additional effect of confinement on the collapse transition, and the ability of simple scaling models to describe the behavior.