Adsorption of semiflexible chains on nanostriped surfaces: Monte Carlo simulations

Monte Carlo simulations were carried out to investigate the adsorption of semiflexible chains from a semidilute solution to substrates with periodic stripes of width w. The chains are made of fused N = 10 monomers of diameter sigma interacting with each other through excluded volume interactions and with the stripes via a square-well potential of depth epsilon and width sigma. The surface coverage was found to increase upon increasing the chain stiffness and decreases on increasing the width of the stripes. At small w, more flexible chains are adsorbed than stiff chains. Analysis of the radius of gyration for the chains showed that when w < 8 sigma, the component along the stripe direction is significantly larger than the others. Orientational order parameter reveals that, for small w, chains have preference to align along the stripe direction.