Adsorption of vinyl trimethoxysilane and formation of vinyl siloxane nanolayers on zinc surface from aqueous solution

The method of quartz crystal microbalance is used to study adsorption of vinyl trimethoxysilane (VS) on the surface of zinc from an aqueous solution. Adsorption isotherms are obtained. Approaches corresponding to the known adsorption isotherms are used for interpretation of adsorption data: Langmuir, BET, Flory–Huggins, Langmuir multicenter, Temkin, and Langmuir–Freundlich. It is shown that silanes are adsorbed on the surface of thermally deposited zinc from aqueous solutions and displace adsorbed water from the surface by occupying more than six adsorption sites on the surface. It is found that monolayer coverage of the zinc surface is reached at a concentration of the VS solution of 1 × 10–4 M. The neighboring adsorbate molecules can interact, forming siloxane dimers and trimers bound to the metal surface by either covalent or hydrogen bonds. Adsorption heats are calculated using different adsorption models. It is shown that VS is chemosorbed on the surface of zinc. An increase in the concentration of the VS solution up to 0.1 M results in formation of polycondensed siloxane oligomers on the surface with polycondensation degree n = 8–12. Oligomer surface fragments are connected with each other by hydrogen bonds and are connected with the surface by Zn–O–Si bridge bonds. The overall thickness of such a layer is 10–12 nm or ten molecular layers.