New "Lollipop" Film Promises Improved Electronics

In order to improve this, three teams of chemists and chemical engineers have made a nearly defect-free LB film, thus increasing the application possibilities of LB films. Results of their research are reported in the Aug. 17 issue of the journal Science.

"This is a huge improvement," says Paul S. Cremer, a Texas A&M chemist and leader of one of the teams. "We have substantially reduced the number of defects in our LB layer, pointing a pathway as to how we might start thinking about sensor devices, electrical switches and non-linear optics materials."

An LB film consists of a single layer or many layers of organic material, each layer being one-molecule thick, deposited on a solid or liquid substrate. The film created by these scientists is made of one layer of steric acid molecules.

"Each molecule has the shape of an upside down lollipop," Cremer says. "The head represents the carboxylic acid and the long chain represents the tail."

The most striking feature of these molecules is that they are amphiphilic: the head is water-soluble whereas the tail is water-insoluble.

"These molecules love water on one side and hate water on the other side," Cremer says, "but the two sides are bound, they cannot come apart."

Ideally, the molecules sit in a perfect lattice next to each other throughout the whole layer. In reality - at least until this recent discovery - the molecules tended to cluster here and there, making one or more layers, and leaving holes in between the clusters.

Over the past couple of years, the three groups led respectively by Joseph A. Zasadzinski, professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Daniel K. Schwartz, associate professor of chemical engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Cremer at Texas A&M have been trying to make a highly regular layer of steric acid molecules with the least number of detects as possible. The work began with Zasadzinski's idea of using more basic (non-acid) solutions.

"If you try to make these films in an acid solution, you get many more detects," Cremer says. "But if you use a basic solution, the carboxylic acid of every molecule loses a proton. That leaves a negative charge at the base of each molecule. Then if you bring in a cadmium ion, which is doubly positively charged, in between the molecules, it sticks there, locking the molecules in place."

Acting like glue, cadmium ions stick the bases of each molecule with its neighbor. The molecules cannot escape from each other nor can they jump onto each other to form more layers.

"We are locking the lollipop heads together," Cremer says, "so we can have only one layer all the way along the surface without big holes or the wrong number of layers in some places on the surface."

Cremer notes that scientists could have predicted such result many years ago, but they would not have had the techniques to prove it. They would also had to have the right basic (non-acid) solution, to consider an LB film made of steric acids, and to choose cadmium as the "stiffening" agent. (Calcium and magnesium, for example, are also doubly charged, he notes, but they do not have quite the right properties.)

Cremer adds that though this achievement is unprecedented, it is only one way to make a nearly-defect free LB layer.

"Our LB film is the best ordered among all other known LB films," he says, "but this is one way of doing it. We have not solved all the problems yet."