Berlin 2005 – scientific programme

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CPP: Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 29: POSTER: Polymer physics

CPP 29.4: Poster

Tuesday, March 8, 2005, 16:30–18:30, Poster TU D

Mechanics of flat freestanding membranes — •Ingo Dönch, G. Bogdanovic, V. Bosio, M. Nolte, B. Schöler, A. Fery, and H. Möhwald — MPI of Colloids and Interfaces 14176 Golm

Lab on a chip applications demand for miniaturization of existing technologies for sensing physical solution properties like hydrostatic or osmotic pressure. In this context, membrane sensors are promising, since they can be scaled down without change of concept.

We have to developed a novel technique that allows to transfer ultrathin polyelectrolyte multilayer membranes onto substrates with holes of diameters between several microns and several 100s of microns. The compliance of the resulting membrane patches is depending only on the thickness of the membrane and the radius of the covered hole. It can be described with simple continuum mechanical models. We can directly probe the compliance of the membranes with AFM and compare our findings to these predictions.

Since the thickness of the multilayers can be controlled on the nm level, the compliance of the membranes can be precisely controlled and varied over orders of magnitude. Additionaly, the PE-membranes are semi-permeable, which makes them sensitive to osmotic pressure differences. Thus they are promising elements for future micro-scale membrane sensors.