Polydopamine Films from the Forgotten Air/Water Interface

The formation of polydopamine under mild oxidation conditions from dopamine solutions with mechanical agitation leads to the formation of films that can functionalize all kinds of materials. In the absence of stirring of the solution, we report the formation of polydopamine films at the air/water interface (PDA A/W) and suggest that it arises from an homogeneous nucleation process. These films grow two times faster than in solution and can be deposited on hydrophilic or hydrophobic substrates by the Langmuir-Schaeffer technique. Thanks to this new method, porous and hydrophobic materials like polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membranes can be completely covered with a 35 nm thick PDA A/W film after only 3h of reaction. Finally the oxidation of a monomer followed by a polymerization in water is not exclusive to polydopamine since we also transferred polyaniline functional films from the air/water interface to solid substrates. These findings suggest that self-assembly from a solution containing hydrophilic monomers undergoing a chemical transformation (here oxidation and oligomerization) could be a general method to produce films at the liquid/air interface.