Adsorption of water, ions, and biomolecules constitutes the first events oc
curring at biomaterial biosystem interfaces. In this work, the adsorption a
nd coadsorption of water and glycine on TiO2 were studied by thermal desorp
tion spectroscopy (TDS). The first water monolayer desorbs in three peaks a
round 180K, 300K, and 400K, which are assigned to water molecularly adsorbe
d at oxygen sites, at Ti4+ sites, and to recombination of dissociated water
, respectively. A fourth desorption peak (160K), appearing at coverages > 0
.8 monolayer, is attributed to water clusters and multilayers. The water-Ti
O2 interaction is changed if the surface is annealed in vacuum, which leads
to increased hydroxylation. Desorption spectra from glycine overlayers eva
porated on TiO2 in situ show that around 40% of the first monolayer desorbs
as intact molecules (-300-450 K) and the remainder as dissociation fragmen
ts and surface reaction products around 600 K. At coverages > 0.6 monolayer
s, intact molecules desorbing from cluster multilayers at 310 K are detecte
d. The glycine desorption spectra are unaffected by coadsorbed water. In co
ntrast, coadsorption of glycine displaces water from more strongly bound st
ates in the monolayer to more weakly bound states and clusters, making the
surface more hydrophobic. The study shows that TDS is a powerful method for
characterizing biomaterial surfaces with regard to their interaction with
biologically relevant molecules. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.