Reactive or self-decontaminating polymer materials that provide protection against chemical or biological weapons are of fervent interest to the Department of Defense. Polyethylenimines (PEI) have found broad use in current self-decontaminating platform technologies due to the high density of reactive amine groups. Furthermore, PEI materials are utilized in a wide array of additional applications, including gene transfection and chemical/biological sensing, that depend heavily upon the surface functionality and morphology of the materials. It is therefore critical to understand the surface-specific interactions occurring at the interface in order to systematically enhance the performance of future polymer-based self-decontaminating platform materials. To this end we utilize vibrational sum frequency generation spectroscopy (VSFG) to study the interfacial behavior of linear and branched polyethylenimine thin films as a function of their chemical environment. We observe the PEI film surface structure to be highly responsive to changes in relative humidity.

Surface structure of polyethylenimine thin films as a function of relative humidity analyzed with vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy

245th National Meeting (2013)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.