Self-Assembling of polyelectrolyte multilayers

E. GUZMAN; H. RITACCO; F. ORTEGA; R-G RUBIO

Lima, Peru

Simposio; SLAP 2008. XI Simposio Latinoamericano y IX Congreso Iberoamericano de Polímeros; 2008

Universidad Católica (Pontificia) del Peru

After the seminal works of Decher and co-workers using polyelectrolytes with charges of opposite sign, the sequential electrostatic self-assembling of oppositely charged materials has attracted considerable attention as a simple and versatile method for constructing nanostructured materials. The reason of this interest is the existence of a large amount of promising applications in different fields as sensors, functional coatings, selective membranes and drug delivery. Even though much has been advanced in the understanding or self-assembled multilayers of polyelectrolytes, less effort has been dedicated to the study of the adsorption kinetics, and many questions remain open about the detailed structure of this non-equilibrium materials.In this work we have carried out a multi-technique experimental study of the adsorption kinetics of multilayers formed by poly(diallyldimethylammoniun chloride) -PDADMAC- and poly(4-styrene sulfonate of sodium) -PSSNa- as a function of the number of layers, and using several ionic strengths. The main techniques used were a dissipative quartz microbalance (QCM) and ellipsometry. UV-Vis and surface potential techniques were also used. The combination of the results of QCM and ellipsometry have allowed us to obtain information about on the water content of multilayers as a function of number of layers.