Polymer brushes at curved surfaces.

The polymer adsorption theory of Scheutjens and Fleer is used to describe polymer brushes at spherical and cylindrical surfaces that are immersed in a low molecular weight solvent. The volume fraction profiles of such brushes is analyzed, special attention being paid to spherical brushes in athermal solvents. These are shown to generally consist of two parts: a power law-like part and a part that is consistent with a parabolic potential energy profile of the polymer segments