Potential Profiles Between Polyelectrolyte Multilayers and Spherical Colloids Measured with TIRM

摘要

We investigated the potential profile between colloidal probes floating above a polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM), built up by the layer by layer technique with Total Internal Reflection Microscopy (TIRM). The interaction between a single poly(ethyleneimine) layer and an amino-terminated polystyrene latex sphere can be accurately described by the superposition of electrostatic repulsion and gravity. PEM with more than one layer exhibit laterally inhomogeneous potentials with extremely long ranging repulsive contributions.