Adhesion between a polydisperse polymer brush and an elastomer

The interface between a flat solid surface and a cross-linked elastomer can be considerably strengthened by the addition of chains (chemically identical to the elastomer) that are tethered by one end to the solid surface. At high grafting densities these coupling chains may, however, segregate from the elastomer and the adhesion may drop considerably. This important problem has been recently considered by de Gennes et al. in the case of a monodisperse open-quote brush close-quote. In this article we analyse the adhesion between a polydisperse brush and an elastomer, having in mind some very recent experiments by Marciano et al. copyright 1996 American Institute of Physics