Scaling behavior of a brush-homopolymer interface in the limit of high grafting density.

The interface between a polymer brush and a chemically equivalent homopolymer is examined using self-consistent field theory (SCFT). Focusing on ultrahigh grafting densities, we extract how the properties scale with the brush thickness, L, and compare with predictions based on strong-stretching theory (SST). Although the scaling exponents are consistent, the overall agreement is poor. We attribute this to the inaccurate way the SST-based calculation treats chain fluctuations at the extremity of the brush. This accounts for a previous disagreement between SCFT and SST in regards to autophobic dewetting, and brings into question a number of other SST predictions. Our conclusion is that SST requires a more sophisticated treatment of finite-stretching corrections, along the lines of that proposed by Likhtman and Semenov [Europhys. Lett. 51, 307 (2000)].