ORIGINAL PAPER Fabrication of covalently bonded nanostructured thin films of epoxy resin and polydimethylsiloxane for oil adsorption Sadia Batool 1 • Anum Mahmood 1 • Rohama Gill 1 • Shahid Saeed Qureshi 2 • Muhammad Mazhar 3 • Mohamed Bououdina 4 Received: 25 May 2016 / Revised: 29 January 2017 / Accepted: 15 March 2017 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2017 Abstract Thin films of architectures PEI(CNER a /PDMS) n , PEI(CNER b /PDMS) n , (PEI/CNER b ) n and PEI(CNER b /NH 2 -MMT/PEI) n have been fabricated via covalent layer-by-layer technique. Different film deposition parameters such as solvent type, polymer concentration, polymer ratio and dipping time have been optimized to achieve a uniform growth of layers. The effect of polymer concentration and dip- ping time on film thickness was also studied via ellipsometer. The optimized ratio of polymer concentration was 1:1 and 1:2 for PEI(CNER a /PDMS) n and PEI(CNER b / PDMS) n , respectively. AFM analysis indicated that the films were homogeneous while contact angle measurements revealed that although films were hydrophobic in nature yet they have wetting property due to the presence of hydroxyl groups formed during curing process. These epoxy-based multilayers have shown signifi- cant oil adsorption capacity. All the fabricated films qualify scotch tape test and were found resistant towards strong acids, bases and organic solvents. Keywords Layer by Layer (LbL) Á Cresol novolac epoxy resin (CNER) Á Poly dimethyl siloxane (PDMS) Á Composite thin films Á Oil adsorption & Rohama Gill rohama_gill@hotmail.com; dr.gill@fjwu.edu.pk 1 Department of Environmental Sciences, Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi 46000, Pakistan 2 Department of Chemistry, Government Post Graduate College (GPGC), Jhelum 49600, Pakistan 3 Department of Chemistry, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 4 Department of Physics, College of Science, University of Bahrain, PO Box 32038, Sakheer, Kingdom of Bahrain 123 Polym. Bull. DOI 10.1007/s00289-017-1988-0