title: Self assembling and crosslinking of polyelectrolyte multilayer films of chitosan and alginate studied by QCM and IR spectroscopy.
abstract: The formation of novel biocompatible multilayer films based on the alternate deposition of CHI and ALG was investigated for the first time by QCM-D and FTIR-ATR. A linear increase of the thickness was found during the film build-up. GLUT was used to crosslink the films terminated with either CHI or ALG. A change in the QCM-D signal was observed just in the first case, indicating that crosslinking only takes place in the top CHI layer. The evolution of the dissipation factor during crosslinking was modelled with a first-order kinetics; this reaction was found to be faster for chitosan terminated films with a lower number of multilayers. It was also found that more robust films could be produced by crosslinking the intermediate CHI layers during the build-up.
authors.affiliation: 3B's Research Group, Biomaterials, Biodegradables and Biomimetics, Dept. of Polymer Engineering, University of Minho, AvePark, Zona Industrial da Gandra, S. Cláudio do Barco, Guimarães, Portugal.
authors.forename: Natália M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Alves
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Picart
authors.forename: João F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Mano