Entangled polymer flows at interfaces

Shear responsive friction at solid-liquid interfaces could become an important component in various technologies such as microfluidics, lubrication and polymer processing. Our model system is a polymer brush grafted on a solid substrate, subject to shear flow by an entangled polymer solution. The structure of the brush was probed both experimentally by Rheo - Neutron Reflectometry, and by computer simulations based on soft blobs. In the simulations we demonstrate for the first time that it is possible to suppress polymer chain crossings and observe entanglement dynamics using only the soft blob repulsive potential. To confine the blobs between two hard plates we introduce a new boundary condition, mirror-and-shift, which enables a monotonic, rather than oscillatory, density profile climb at the interface. The simulation techniques are then combined and compared against experimental measurement of polymer brush thickness as a function of shear rate. A good quantitative agreement is obtained, concluding that the brush thickness collapses perpendicularly to the applied shear flow, and is thus a non-linear second order effect. We attribute this effect to the normal stress difference, commonly occurring in entangled polymer liquids in their shear thinning flow regime.