Membranes with anchored polymers at the adsorption transition

Polymers which are anchored to membranes exert bending moments onto these membranes. It is shown by general scaling arguments and explicit calculations for ideal chains i) that the polymer-induced "spontaneous" curvature M sp has the scaling form Ω sp ( N ϕ )/ N ν , where N and are the chain length and the distance from the adsorption-desorption transition, respectively, and ii) that M sp changes its sign close to this transition. Thus, if the polymer and the membrane experience effectively attractive and repulsive interactions, the membrane is bent towards and away from the polymer, respectively.