Measurement of forces between surfaces in polymer fluids.
01 January 1989
We review the current status of direct measurements of interactions between polymer surfaces using a surface forces apparatus. We focus our attention on two regimes which have been extensively examined, namely, interactions between adsorbed polymer layers under "near theta" conditions (using homopolymers) and in "good solvent" environments (using amphiphiles). For adsorbed homopolymers we find that the free solution radius of gyration of the molecules persists as the relevant length scale and that although the measured interactions can be qualitatively understood, no theory to-date successfully predicts the magnitudes of the forces.