New insight into surface properties of LB film of an amphiphilic terpolymer

Amphiphilic terpolymer (TPR) exhibits good film-forming behavior on pure water observed by means of π-A isotherms. To gain insight into physical properties of TPR, the films have been deposited on silicon substrates at different surface pressure by Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique. It was found that the increase in peak intensities of stretching mode was due to orderly packing of the films. The contact angles increased with increasing surface pressure, indicating an increase in hydrophobicity due to dense packing of chains of TPR. The cyclic voltammetric measurements indicated that TPR showed good current shielding effect for electron-transfer. In a word, LB films of TPR can produce a variety of structures with varied topography, enabling us to control not only the functionality of the surface, but also the interfacial transport characteristics.