Wetting transitions of polymer solutions: Effects of chain length and chain stiffness

Wetting and drying phenomena are studied for flexible and semiflexible polymer solutions via coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations and density functional theory calculations. This study is based on the use of Young's equation for the contact angle, determining all relevant surface tensions from the anisotropy of the pressure tensor. The solvent quality (or effective temperature, equivalently) is varied systematically, while all other interactions remain unaltered. For flexible polymers, the wetting transition temperature T_w increases monotonically with chain length N, while the contact angle at temperatures far below T_w is independent of N. For semiflexible polymer solutions, T_w varies non-monotonically with the persistence length: Initially, T_w increases with increasing chain stiffness and reaches a maximum, but then a sudden drop of T_w is observed, which is associated with the isotropic-nematic transition of the system.