Structure of adsorbed polymer layers: Loops and tails

In this paper we discuss the elements of a recent mean-field theory developed to describe the structure of an adsorbed polymer layer. Recently it has been shown by Semenov and Joanny that the central part of an adsorbed polymer layer does not display a self-similar structure but the profiles depend on a characteristic length-scale z*. This length separates the region domainted by the loops from the region where tails are dominant and it is only dependent on the size of the chain and on the dimension of the space. The results of the mean-field calculation are compared with the numerical solution of the full self-consistent field calculations.