Conformations and adsorption behavior of poly(allylamine hydrochloride) studied by single molecule force spectroscopy
Conformations and adsorption behavior of poly（allylamine hydrochloride） studied by single molecule force spectroscopy

Poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH), which is frequently used in fabricating polyelectrolyte multilayer films, was studied by single molecule force spectroscopy (SMFS). Plenty of force-extension curves with a long plateau were obtained in water, indicating that train-like structure was predominant when PAH was adsorbed on the substrate. It was found that the peak-type force-extension curves of PAH in water were not able to be fitted by the modified freely-jointed chain model. Additionally, there was a flat region in the derivative of force-extension curves. Thus, it was inferred that PAH chain in water was in a special conformation and underwent a "conformational transition" under the stretching of an external force. This phenomenon did not appear in the SMFS experiment in 1 mol/L urea solution, which indi-cated that urea was able to break the special conformation.