Langmuir-Blodgett transfer from the oil-water interface

Almost all Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films were prepared with the classical Langmuir film balance, developed more than a century ago. To date, the success of the classical Langmuir film balance and the LB transfer technique is primarily restricted to the study of self-assembled monolayers at the air-water surface. It is challenging to study self-assembled monolayers at the oil-water interface, since the Langmuir film balance requires stacked oil and water layers. We hypothesize that a newly developed experimental method, called constrained drop surfactometry (CDS), is capable of preparing and characterizing LB films from the oil-water interface.

We have developed a novel droplet-based LB transfer technique capable of preparing LB films from the oil-water interface. In conjunction with atomic force microscopy, we have demonstrated the capacity of the CDS in studying a natural pulmonary surfactant film self-assembled at the perfluorocarbon-water interface, and have compared to the LB films prepared from the air-water surface using the classical Langmuir film balance.

Our findings have demonstrated a novel paradigm for studying self-assembled monolayers and for preparing LB films from the oil-water interface. The CDS holds great promise for expanding the applicability of the traditional LB transfer technique from the air-water surface to the oil-water interface.