Structure of Adsorbed Polymer Layers: Loops and Tails

The structure of an adsorbed polymer layer in equilibrium with a dilute good solvent is considered theoretically. It is shown that under saturation conditions the tails of the polymer chains give an important contribution to the monomer density profile in the outer layer away from the wall: the tail contribution dominates over the loop contribution in the region aN 0.5 < z < aN ν , where z is the distance from the wall, a the link size, and ν the Flory exponent. The characteristic layer thickness is thus determined by the tail properties.