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Polymer Bulletin, Vol.57, No.3, 407-413, 2006
Prolonged degradation of end-capped polyelectrolyte multilayer films
Cationic chitosan (CT) and anionic dextran sulfate (Dex) were layer-by-layer (LbL) assembled from aqueous solutions containing 1 M NaCl on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) substrate, and the original films ((CT-Dex)(3)-CT)) were end-capped with LbL assembly from CT solutions containing 1 M NaCl and Dex solutions without NaCl. The enzymatic degradation of films by chitosanase was quantitatively analyzed by QCM in terms of numbers of end-capping steps. The degradation of films end-capped with (Dex-CT)(3) was considerably prolonged when compared to those end-capped with other end-capping steps. A mechanism for the prolonged degradation was proposed by quantitative QCM data and zeta potential results.