Chain conformation and dynamics in spin-assisted weak polyelectrolyte multilayers. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We report on the effect of the deposition technique on film layering, stability, and chain mobility in weak polyelectrolyte layer-by-layer (LbL) films. Ellipsometry and neutron reflectometry (NR) showed that shear forces arising during spin-assisted assembly lead to smaller amounts of adsorbed polyelectrolytes within LbL films, result in a higher degree of internal film order, and dramatically improve stability of assemblies in salt solutions as compared to dip-assisted LbL assemblies. The underlying flattening of polyelectrolyte chains in spin-assisted LbL films was also revealed as an increase in ionization degree of the assembled weak polyelectrolytes. As demonstrated by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP), strong binding between spin-deposited polyelectrolytes results in a significant slowdown of chain diffusion in salt solutions as compared to dip-deposited films. Moreover, salt-induced chain intermixing in the direction perpendicular to the substrate is largely inhibited in spin-deposited films, resulting in only subdiffusional (<2 ) chain displacements even after 200 h exposure to 1 M NaCl solutions. This persistence of polyelectrolyte layering has important ramifications for multistage drug delivery and optical applications of LbL assemblies.

published proceedings

  • Langmuir

author list (cited authors)

  • Zhuk, A., Selin, V., Zhuk, I., Belov, B., Ankner, J. F., & Sukhishvili, S. A.

citation count

  • 20

complete list of authors

  • Zhuk, Aliaksandr||Selin, Victor||Zhuk, Iryna||Belov, Benjamin||Ankner, John F||Sukhishvili, Svetlana A

publication date

  • January 2015