ABSTRACT
A solid surface can be deeply modified by polymer adsorption. Branching introduces two complications: the statistics of the branch points is often poorly controlled, and the basic features of adsorbed layers, made of branched polymers, are relatively unknown. Certain model colloids have evolved with simple, well-controlled solid surfaces and polymer adsorbates. The carbon black particles have a complicated surface, and the polymer is a complex polysaccharide, with at least three modes of interaction. The polymer of interest will be adsorbed to a surface which can be solid, liquid, or even a gas. In practice, the most important regime corresponds to “semidilute” solutions. Depletion layers are important for certain processes where colloidal suspensions are induced to flocculate by addition of free polymer. The starting point of the scaling analysis is the current understanding of polymer solutions with overlapping coils.
