Adsorption of Polyelectrolytes onto Charged Surfaces 55[187, 188]. These methodologies have allowed the development of real world
applications for the LbL materials. This is mainly due to the significant
reduction of the time necessary for the fabrication of the layers and to the
smaller amount of materials that are needed for the layer fabrication, which is
essential for the scaling-up at industrial level [134].
The spin-coating consists in the deposition of a drop of polymer solution
onto the template surface, which is spun at constant velocity to favour the
extension of the material onto the surface. Once the film is deposited, it is
necessary to rinse the film deposited following similar protocol than that used
for the layer deposition, during the rinsing step the substrate remains under
spinning until total drying. The multilayered architecture are obtained by the
sequential repetition of the spinning-rinsing cycles until the film with the
number of layer desired is obtained [189, 190]. One of the most important
advantages of this methodology is the possibility to obtain films with
relatively low roughness [190]. The thickness and roughness of the films can
be easily controlled tuning two parameters: spinning velocity and solution
concentration [191]. However, the spin-coating presents some limitations on
the fabrication of LbL multilayers due to the fact that water is the most used
solvent, being its low volatility critical.
Reproduced from Reference [182] with permission from The Royal Society of
Chemistry.
Figure 5. Sketch of the LbL assembly of polyelectrolyte multilayers by dipping.