Structural evolution of end-tethered PEO layers chemisorbed on gold studied by specular neutron reflectometry: Effects on protein adsorption

The influence of polyethylene oxide (PEO) film architecture on protein resistance was investigated. It was observed that the PEO volume fraction increases significantly and the PEO-solution interface becomes very sharp at a chemisorption time between 0.5 and 4 h. Fibrinogen adsorption experiments indicated that the layer of higher PEO density has lower protein repelling capacity. It was suggested that protein resistance does not increase montonically with PEO chain density.