Light-triggered polymer diffusion in anisotropic multizone films

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The project addresses understanding of inter-polymer interactions in anisotropic ionically crosslinked polymer films. The layer-by-layer self-assembly will be employed to create multizone polyelectrolyte films with “liquefied” zones with high polymer mobility separated by “frozen” zones with low polymer mobility presenting a diffusion barrier. The polymer mobility will be tailored by the molecular weight, which allows to keep the chemical composition the same for all zones. The exchange of polymers and externally loaded proteins between “liquefied” zones will be triggered by local interruption of the barrier induced by IR-light. For this purpose, light-responsive microbeads will be integrated into the barrier and will work as diffusion gates, which reversibly collapse at phase transition upon light irradiation. Film structure and mechanical properties, inter-polymer interactions (inter-polyelectrolyte and polyelectrolyte-protein), polymer diffusion, and light response of composite microbeads (pNIPAM-Au@nanorod) will be studied. The mechanism of film formation and fabrication of heterogeneous structures from homogeneous polymer films will be considered. Besides a high impact for fundamental research, in future the films might be employed for (external) control over composition and dynamics in structured polymer networks.