Bleeding Surfactant at the Surface of Polyethylene Blend Films. (English)

We investigated the changes in the surface structure of the polyethylene/surfactant blend films due to the annealing. The measurements of attenuated total reflectance-infrared spectroscopy and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction revealed that the amount of the surfactant at the surface increased with increasing the annealing time, suggesting that the surfactant bleeds out to the surface of the film during the annealing. mosaic-shaped step structure of the surfactant crystals was observed under atomic force microscope at the surface of the annealed blend films', each step height was roughly the length of four to twenty surfactant molecules. Owing to the bleed of the surfactant, the polarity of the film surface changed from hydrophobic to hydrophilic by the annealing. Such structure changes of the film surface can control the gas permeability of the blend films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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