Temperature Dependence of the Slip Length in Polymer Melts at Attractive Surfaces

Using Couette and Poiseuille flows, we extract the temperature dependence of the slip length, delta, from molecular dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained polymer model in contact with an attractive surface. delta is dictated by the ratio of bulk viscosity and surface mobility. At weakly attractive surfaces, lubrication layers form; delta is large and increases upon cooling. Close to the glass transition temperature Tg, very large slip lengths are observed. At a more attractive surface, a sticky surface layer is built up, giving rise to small slip lengths. Upon cooling, delta decreases at high temperatures, passes through a minimum, and grows for T-->Tg. At strongly attractive surfaces, the Navier-slip condition fails to describe Couette and Poiseuille flows simultaneously. The simulations are corroborated by a schematic, two-layer model suggesting that the observations do not depend on details of the computational model.