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a) b - École Polytechnique de Montréal

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As shown in Figure 2-44, swelling and overcompensation steps occur simultaneously during<br />

construction of the multilayer, while in the case of high salt concentration, <strong>de</strong>construction of<br />

polyanion/polycation is observed.<br />

As more salt is ad<strong>de</strong>d, the multilayer swells more and excess charge can be spread into the<br />

multilayer surface to a point where all the polymer/polymer ion pairings are forced apart and<br />

intrinsic compensation is no longer enough to keep the multilayer together. The critical salt<br />

concentration for strong polyelectrolytes is much larger than for weak polyelectrolytes. It can be<br />

said that further addition of salt can neutralize and thus dissociate weak polyelectrolytes at a<br />

lower salt concentration(Dubas & Schlenoff, 1999). For example, the critical amount of NaCl for<br />

PSS/PDADMAC is 3.5M, while for a weak polyacid like PAA with a molecular weight of 84500<br />

and a pH of 11, its value is 0.3M(Dubas & Schlenoff, 2001a). Salt can easily swell weak<br />

polyelectrolytes in the multilayer structure, like PAA/PDADMAC, and consequently give more<br />

<strong>de</strong>posited mass on the surface while it is less stable than films constructed by strong<br />

polyelectrolyte swollen due to salt, such as PSS/PDADMAC.<br />

Some mo<strong>de</strong>ls(Schlenoff, Ly, & Li, 1998) have been <strong>de</strong>veloped for the overcompensation at the<br />

surface resulting of polymer excess charge due to the presence of salt. It is conclu<strong>de</strong>d that salt<br />

causes the swelling of the polyelectrolytes and relieves some of the steric repulsive interactions<br />

leading to enhanced <strong>de</strong>grees of freedom. It allows a wi<strong>de</strong>r range for the distribution of excess<br />

charges and a greater thickness increment per layer. Lefaux et al.(Lefaux, Zimberlin, Dobrynin,<br />

& Mather, 2004) studied the <strong>de</strong>pen<strong>de</strong>nce of multilayer growth rate on the solution ionic strength<br />

by the spin assembly method. UV-Vis and AFM showed that the growth rate of polymer surface<br />

coverage increases rapidly with salt concentration up to 0.1M, and that at a higher concentration<br />

of salt a constant value or plateau is reached.<br />

Another important effect of salt on multilayer thickness growth is that the addition of salt results<br />

in an enhancement of screening and serves to <strong>de</strong>crease polymer/surface interactions, permitting<br />

more chain loops and tails formation.<br />

87

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