Effect of polyelectrolyte-surfactant complexation on Marangoni transport at a liquid-liquid interface

Complexation of surfactants and oppositely charged polyelectrolytes is expected to alter Marangoni transport at a fluid interface compared to either single component system due to altered interfacial tension isotherms and mass transfer rates as well as adsorption irreversibility effects. We investigate Marangoni transport at the oil/water interface by passing mixtures of the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and cationic polyelectrolyte poly(3-(2-methylpropionamide)propyl) trimethylammonium chloride-acrylamide (poly[AM-MAPTAC]), or rinsing solutions, over an oil/water interface in a radial, stagnation point flow. The displacements of adsorbed tracer particles are recorded through optical microscopy. The net displacement, defined as the sum of the displacements occurring during the adsorption and desorption stages of one application and rinsing cycle, is up to 10 times greater for complexing surfactant/polymer mixtures compared to either single component system. The enhanced net displacement is largely determined by the enhanced transport upon adsorption, while the reverse displacement that would normally occur upon rinsing is partially suppressed by partially irreversible polymer adsorption at the oil/water interface. In addition to effects of complexation on interfacial tension gradient induced flow, complexation effects on the bulk, and possibly interfacial, viscosity also influence the interfacial transport.

Signal enhancement in ligand–receptor interactions using dynamic polymers at quartz crystal microbalance sensors

The signal enhancement properties of QCM sensors based on dynamic, biotinylated poly(acrylic acid) brushes has been studied in interaction studies with an anti-biotin F_ab fragment.

Transient Marangoni transport of colloidal particles at the liquid/liquid interface caused by surfactant convective-diffusion under radial flow

HYPOTHESIS

Interfacial tension gradients at a liquid/liquid interface drive Marangoni flows. When colloidal particles are adsorbed to an interface in systems with spatial and temporal gradients of surfactant concentration, these interfacial flows can be potentially significant contributors to the direction and rate of particle transport.

EXPERIMENTS

In this work, we use optical microscopy to measure the interfacial velocities of 5μm diameter polystyrene latex particles adsorbed at an oil/water interface, using olive oil to represent polar oils often encountered in cleaning applications.

FINDINGS

On surfactant adsorption the maximum interfacial velocity scales linearly with bulk surfactant concentration, even for concentrations exceeding the critical micelle concentration (CMC). The maximum interfacial velocity weakly decreases with increasing flow rate, but it varies non-monotonically with the radial distance from the inlet. Upon surfactant desorption into a rinse solution, the maximum velocity increases with increasing concentration of the original surfactant solution, but only up to a plateau near the CMC. These experimental trends are well-described by a convective-diffusion model for surfactant transport to or from the liquid/liquid interface coupled with Langmuir-type adsorption, using a constitutive relation between the interfacial tension gradient and interfacial velocity based on the interfacial tangential stress jump.

Reducing protein adsorption with polymer-grafted hyaluronic acid coatings

We report a thermoresponsive chemical modification strategy of hyaluronic acid (HA) for coating onto a broad range of biomaterials without relying on chemical functionalization of the surface. Poly(di(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate) (PMEO2MA), a polymer with a lower critical solution temperature of 26 °C in water, was grafted onto HA to allow facile formation of biopolymer coatings. While the mechanism for film formation appears to involve a complex combination of homogeneous nucleation followed by heterogeneous film growth, we demonstrate that it resulted in hydrophilic coatings that significantly reduce protein adsorption despite the high fraction of hydrophobic (PMEO2MA). Structural characterization was performed using atomic force microscopy (AFM), which showed the formation of a dense, continuous coating based on 200 nm domains that were stable in protein solutions for at least 15 days. The coatings had a water contact angle of 16°, suggesting the formation of hydrophilic but not fully wetting films. Quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) as well as biolayer interferometry (BLI) techniques were used to measure adsorption of bovine serum albumin (BSA), fibrinogen (Fbg), and human immunoglobulin (IgG), with results indicating that HA-PMEO2MA-coated surfaces effectively inhibited adsorption of all three serum proteins. These results are consistent with previous studies demonstrating that this degree of hydrophilicity is sufficient to generate an effectively nonfouling surface and suggest that segregation during the solubility transition resulted in a surface that presented the hydrophilic HA component of the hybrid biopolymer. We conclude that PMEO2MA-grafted HA is a versatile platform for the passivation of hydrophobic biomaterial surfaces without need for substrate functionalization.

Surface-confined photopolymerization of pH-responsive acrylamide/acrylate brushes on polymer thin films

Dynamic acrylamide/acrylate polymeric brushes were synthesized at gold-plated quartz crystal surfaces. The crystals were initially coated with polystyrene-type thin films, derivatized with photolabile iniferter groups, and subsequently subjected to photoinitiated polymerization in acrylamide/acrylate monomer feeds. This surface-confined polymerization method enabled direct photocontrol over the polymerization, as followed by increased frequency responses of the crystal oscillations in a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). The produced polymer layers were also found to be highly sensitive to external acid/base stimuli. Large oscillation frequency shifts were detected when the brushes were exposed to buffer solutions of different pH. The dynamic behavior of the resulting polymeric brushes was evaluated, and the extent of expansion and contraction of the films was monitored by the QCM setup in situ in real time. The resulting responses were rapid, and the effects were fully reversible. Low pH resulted in full contractions of the films, whereas higher pH yielded maximal expansion in order to minimize repulsion around the charged acrylate centers. The surfaces also proved to be very robust because the responsiveness was reproducible over many cycles of repeated expansion and contraction. Using ellipsometry, copolymer layers were estimated to be approximately 220 nm in a collapsed state and approximately 340 nm in the expanded state, effectively increasing the thickness of the film by 55%.