Abstract

Thin films have a large impact on our day to day lives and they find a variety of uses including optical, electrical, or chemical coatings, biomimetics, and various sensors such as pH sensors. Great interest exists in nanoparticles and organic based thin films, due to ease of fabrication, low cost manufacturing, and easy tunability of various properties compared to the inorganic and semiconducting materials [1]. One advantageous method of fabricating thin films is using the Ionic Self-Assembled Monolayers (ISAM) technique [2]. This method consists of alternate immersions of the substrate in aqueous solutions (most often polymer solutions) which cause material deposition on the substrate’s surface based on electrostatic attraction. This process is repeated until the desired film thickness is reached. The method is easy, inexpensive, environmentally friendly, and provides control of structure and thickness at the nanometer level [3-5]. In addition, the generated films are homogeneous and can be conformal [6]. Here we present long-term response of ISAM films based on polymer and pH sensitive dye when immersed in buffers of various pH values.

© 2017 IEEE