Langmuir monolayers

A Langmuir–Blodgett film contains one or more monolayers of an organic material, deposited from the surface of a liquid onto a solid by immersing (or emersing) the solid substrate into (or from) the liquid. A monolayer is adsorbed homogeneously with each immersion or emersion step, thus films with very accurate thickness can be formed. This thickness is accurate because the thickness of each monolayer is known and can therefore be added to find the total thickness of a Langmuir-Blodgett Film. The monolayers are assembled vertically and are usually composed of amphiphilic molecules (see Chemical polarity) with a hydrophilic head and a hydrophobic tail (example: fatty acids). Langmuir–Blodgett films are named after Irving Langmuir and Katharine B. Blodgett, who invented this technique while working in Research and Development for General Electric Co. An alternative technique of creating single monolayers on surfaces is that of self-assembled monolayers.

Langmuir-Blodgett Films should not be confused with Langmuir films, which tends to describe an organic monolayer submersed in an aqueous solution .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langmuir-Blodgett_film