TWO-DIMENSIONAL PROPERTIES OF SUFACTANT-LIKE POLYMER MONOLAYERS.

A functional polymer monolayer at an air/water interface has been studied systematically by substituting a hydrophobic backbone with a hydrophilic moiety (OH) by measuring the surface pressure as a function of surface concentration for different molecular weight polymers. The characteristic scaling exponent ( nu ) estimated from the isotherms and the overlap surface concentration suggests that the air/water interface becomes a better solvent as the amount of hydrophilic functional groups is increased. Also, the isotherms show that the area per polymer molecule increases with increasing amounts of OH groups. The surface occupied area per OH group ( sigma //o) is estimated with the ideal gas law at a dilute surface concentration. The results show that the sigma //o is a minimum at the same substitution level at which the reduction of water surface tension is a maximum.