Leibniz-Institut für Polymerforschung Dresden e. V.

Electrokinetic and surface conductivity measurements provide valuable information about the charging and structure of polymers at interfaces. In order to use the versatile options of this approach, we developed the Microslit Electrokinetic Set-up. The instrument was further extended by implementing Reflectometric Interference Spectroscopy for the simultaneous determination of the optical layer thickness of polymer films and ATR-FTIR spectroscopy for assessing secondary structure variations of immobilized biopolymers as influenced by variations of the interfacial electrical charge.

References

[1] Werner et al. Extended Electrokinetic Characterization of Flat Solid Surfaces, J. Colloid Interface Sci. 1998, 208, 329.

[2] Zimmermann et al. Electrokinetic microslit experiments to analyse the charge formation at solid/liquid interfaces. Microfluidics and Nanofluodics 2006, 2, 367.

[3] Zimmermann et al. Electrostatic Switching of Biopolymer Layers. Insights from Combined Electrokinetics and Reflectometric Interference. Analytical Chemistry 2006, 78, 5851.

[4] Zimmermann et al. Combined microslit electrokinetic measurements and reflectometric interference spectroscopy to study protein adsorption processes Biointerphases 2007, 2, 159.