Contamination and Decontamination of Polymer-Coated Surfaces

We study the interaction between a flat surface and a contaminant solution. The surface is protected by a grafted polymer layer. Our primary interest is to better understand and elucidate the effect of simple molecular interactions on the contamination and decontamination of the surface through molecular diffusion. These interactions manifest themselves in the potential of mean force that the contaminant molecule experiences as it diffuses across the grafted polymer layer. For simplicity, we consider that all interactions are of the hard-sphere type. The size of the contaminant molecule is the same as that of the solvent as well as the individual polymer segment. Despite these simplifications, the analysis offers important physical insights and a qualitative description of the contamination and decontamination processes.