Figure 1.

Schematic representation of the system of interest. The ligands are attached to the free ends of surface-tethered polymer chains (L). The surface is also covered with an unfunctionalized filler spacer (S). A surface covered by receptors molecules (R) is separated by a distance D from the grafting surface. z is the distance from the grafting surface to an arbitrary point. When D is small enough, a fraction of the ligand-functionalized polymers can bind to the receptor surface (B). Unbound functionalized polymers are denoted by (U).