Dipping-induced azimuthal helix orientation in Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers of alpha-helical amphiphilic diblock copolypeptides.

The azimuthal helix orientation of the rigid-rod amphiphilic diblock copolypeptides (PLGA-b-PMLGSLGs) of poly(alpha-L-glutamic acid) (PLGA) and poly(gamma-methyl-L-glutamate-ran-gamma-stearyl-L-glutamate) with 30 mol % of stearyl substituents (PMLGSLG) in Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) monolayers was investigated using polarized transmission Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The relative position of dipping with respect to the previous transfer position can be used to manipulate the azimuthal orientation of the helices parallel to or tilted by an angle of 45 degrees with respect to the dipping direction in the transferred films. The study of the azimuthal order for the LB monolayers of PLGA-b-PMLGSLGs of various block lengths revealed that the observed effect arises mainly from the deformation of the PMLGSLG top brush layer, induced by the flow orientation around the transfer region. In those cases where the PMLGSLG block is tilted by a sufficiently large angle with respect to the surface normal, high azimuthal order parameters of 0.5-0.75 were obtained.