Looking for the glass transition in a single molecular layer on the water surface

We present here results which indicate that polymeric monolayers confined at the air-water interface may provide interesting model systems for the study of glass transition phenomenology in a strongly confined 2D geometry. We report on photoinduced relaxation of the pressure-area isotherms in Langmuir monolayers of a photosensitive polyacrylate, using null-ellipsometry to study the evolution of the film thickness in the neighbourhood of the bulk glass transition. Furthermore, viscoelastic behaviour is investigated by a combination of surface quasielastic light scattering and expansion-compression isothermal cycles