END-GRAFTED POLYMER MELT WITH NEMATIC INTERACTION

We study the grafted polymer melt with an imposed local nematic interaction between monomers in the limit of small, fixed coverage and large molecular weight. The interaction couples the orientation of a single monomer to a self-consistently determined field describing the local nematic order parameter. For interaction strengths which avoid the nematic transition of an equivalent ungrafted molten droplet, we find that the pressure profile is reduced in magnitude and corrected by quartic terms in height. We also find that, under these conditions, the nematic ordering in the layer is proportional to the pressure in the layer. It is also the case that the free end density per unit height depends on the nematic interaction strength only through the pressure profile. The form the nematic transition takes in the brush is discussed, and the limit of very strong nematic ordering is described.