The adsorption of a series of (ethylene
oxide−tetrahydrofuran−ethylene oxide),
EO
n
/2THF
m
EO
n
/
2,
triblock copolymers has been studied at the water/hydrophobic silica
interface by time-resolved ellipsometry. The copolymers form monolayers with the
middle tetrahydrofuran block anchoring
at the surface and the ethylene oxide groups either anchoring at the
surface or protruding into the aqueous
phase. The degree of anchoring of the EO chains depends critically
on the surface coverage. The copolymer
isotherms are generally rather well described by the conventional
Langmuir expression, and the plateau
surface area per polymer molecule increases linearly with the molecular
weight. However, the plateau
thickness exhibits a more complex behavior. At low coverages, the
adsorbed layer thickness is small,
and both THF and EO chains form trains at the surface. As the
surface coverage increases, however,
the EO chains are increasingly forced away from the surface, and the
mean thickness of the adsorbed
layer exhibits a relatively strong linear dependence on the surface
excess. At higher coverages, closer to
the adsorption plateau, a weaker dependence is observed. The
thickness increase is in this latter region
due to the increasing steric repulsion between protruding EO chains.
Outside the adsorbed layer, we
also found support for the existence of a depletion layer. We show
further that there are three regimes
in the kinetics of adsorption. In the first (low surface
coverage), the process is diffusion controlled and
the rate is proportional to the concentration difference between the
bulk solution and the subsurface
located just outside the adsorbed layer. In the second regime
(intermediate coverages and adsorption
times), the kinetics are governed by the rate of displacement of
anchored EO chains by THF chains of
adsorbing copolymers. In the third regime (high surface
coverages), the adsorption slows down markedly
due to the energy barrier caused by presence of the relatively dense
brush of adsorbed EO chains. In
this regime, the surface excess varies proportionally with log
t, which was also observed to be the case
during the desorption process.