ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the fabrication, properties, and applications of thin films, a category of two-dimensional nanomaterials with diverse compositions and applications. Thin films can range from simple layers of amphiphiles or model biological membranes to solid layers of silicon, oxides, and metals in integrated circuits, or even combinations of organic soft matter and “hard” inorganic structures. First demonstrated by Katharine Blodgett in 1934, the Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) technique has been by far the oldest and most extensively studied organic nanofilm formation method. The LB film is formed by the immersion of a substrate into the water to break the Langmuir film and transfer the monolayer onto the substrate. The flexibility of the polyelectrolytes used for electrostatic self-assembly, as well as the ease of the self-assembly process, gives it advantages over other methods of creating thin films, such as the LB technique.
