Abstract
Bacterial adhesion can be controlled by different material surface properties, such as surface charge, on which we concentrate in our study. We use a silica surface on which poly(allylamine hydrochloride)/sodium poly(4-styrenesulfonate) (PAH/PSS) polyelectrolyte multilayers were formed. The corresponding surface roughness and hydrophobicity were determined by atomic force microscopy and tensiometry. The surface charge was examined by the zeta potential measurements of silica particles covered with polyelectrolyte multilayers, whereby ionic strength and polyelectrolyte concentrations significantly influenced the build-up process. For adhesion experiments, we used the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The extent of adhered bacteria on the surface was determined by scanning electron microscopy. The results showed that the extent of adhered bacteria mostly depends on the type of terminating polyelectrolyte layer, since relatively low differences in surface roughness and hydrophobicity were obtained. In the case of polyelectrolyte multilayers terminating with a positively charged layer, bacterial adhesion was more pronounced than in the case when the polyelectrolyte layer was negatively charged.
Highlights
Layer-by-layer (LbL) adsorption of polyelectrolytes on various charged surfaces—often known as polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) formation—has been intriguing scientists since the early 1990’s, both from fundamental and applicational points of view [1]
The zeta potential measurements could be divided in two groups, depending on the aims that we wanted to achieve
The zeta potential values obtained using various polyelectrolyte concentrations are presented, and in the second part, we investigated the influence of added supporting electrolyte concentration on the formation of polyelectrolyte multilayers
Summary
Layer-by-layer (LbL) adsorption of polyelectrolytes on various charged surfaces—often known as polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) formation—has been intriguing scientists since the early 1990’s, both from fundamental and applicational points of view [1]. Applications are often related to biomedical technologies, but multilayer thin films can be used in fields such as catalysis, optics, energy, and membranes [4]. Fundamental interest is commonly related to the investigation of linear and/or exponential multilayer growth, and to the effect of experimental conditions (e.g., ionic strength, type of supporting electrolyte, temperature, presence of the anchoring layer) on such build-up processes [5]. The ease of multilayer formation motivated researchers to extend the type of constituents incorporated into such
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