Controlled stripping of polyelectrolyte multilayers by quaternary ammonium surfactants.

ABSTRACT

The quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation technique (QCM-D) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) have been employed to study the interaction of N-tetradecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (TdTmAB) with polyelectrolyte multilayers containing poly(sodium 4-styrene sulfonate) (PSS) as the polyanion and either poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) or poly(diallyl dimethyl ammonium chloride) (PDADMAC) as the polycations. The multilayers were exposed to aqueous solutions of TdTmAB. This resulted in a selective removal of PDADMAC PSS layers while layers with PAH as polycation remained stable. It is suggested that PDADMAC/PSS multilayers can be employed as strippable protecting layers.