Monte Carlo studies of adsorption of a sequenced polyelectrolyte to patterned surfaces

The adsorption of negatively charged polyelectrolyte and a polyampholyte to patterned surfaces has been investigated by using off-lattice Monte Carlo simulations. The surface is decorated by stripe and checkerboard patterns of mixed charges. The polymer has periodic charge segments which can potentially match the periodicity of the surface pattern. Our results show that the chain entropy of a flexible polymer disrupts and prevents full pattern recognition between the charge sequence on the polymer and the surface pattern. Quantities such as average adsorption energy and radii of gyration of the adsorbed polymer are dictated by the size of the surface pattern and the correlation of the polymer charge density (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.