Self-Consistent Field Modeling of Pulling a Test-Chain away from or Pushing It into a Polymer Adsorption Layer

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please, see the attached PDF document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

I thank the reviewer for the positive response and the thorough screening of the paper for remaining typo's.

I have addressed all the suggestions of the the referee.

1. Also in response of the other referee I added a paragraph in the introduction to mention the many 'exact' results on the pulling of an adsorbed chain from the surface. Initially I did not plan to give a full overview of all there is, but I agree with the referee that a few results on computer simulation of the problem are useful as a reference.
2. I have also incorporated the suggestion of the referee to that it might be informative to pull a chain away from an polymer layer in the case that the probe chain has an affinity for the adsorbed chains.
3. I have addressed all the minor suggestions of the referee. In the legend of fig. 1 I have used more quantities than shown in the figure and in response to the referee I have extended the legend to make clear what the quantity $f$ means. The other quantities are mentioned in the text in the same paragraph as the reference to fig. 1 is made. That's why I think that in the present situation the information is complete.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very interesting paper that should certainly be published.  The idea is to use a probe polymer attached to an AFM tip to investigate an adsorbed polymer layer where the density of adsorbed polymer is fairly high.  Two cases are of interest -- one is where the probe adsorbs more strongly than the adsorbed polymer and the other is where it adsorbs less strongly.  Both cases are analyzed and both are interesting.  The methodology is a self-consistent field approach due to Scheutjens and Fleer and I think that this an appropriate level of approximation for the system under consideration.  The author gives a nice account of the essentials of the Scheutjens-Fleer approach.

In the Introduction the author says a bit about what is expected when a single chain is pulled off a surface at which it adsorbs.  There has been quite a lot of recent theoretical work on this problem and it might be useful to include one or two of these recent references.  For instance, Journal of Physics A 46, 435003 (2013) would be suitable lead-in to this literature.  

The English is quite understandable but the paper would benefit from some copy editing to improve the use of English in a few places.

Author Response

I thank the reviewer for the positive words. In the introduction it was mentioned that the theory of pulling a chain from the surface is rather advanced, but I did not attempt to give a full overview of what there is. Also in response to the other reviewer I have added a section on more exact results of the problem and I included the reference suggested by the reviewer. I agree with the reviewer that the paper is more balanced with this information.

I have also found a few linguistic errors which I have corrected.