## 1 Introduction  
At the present time, synthetic polymers are widely used as engineering materials in the construction industry and agriculture [1, 2, 3]. These areas include the creation of building elements [4, 5], the modification of concrete and mortars [6, 7], and the coating of roads and highways [8, 9]. Polymers were shown to prevent soil erosion [3, 10, 11, 12], conserve waste rocks on mining enterprises [13, 14], localize contaminated disperse systems such as silt and ash [15, 16], reinforce highways and railways slopes, earthan dams and embankments [17, 18, 19], and fix loose soils, primarily sands [20, 21, 22, 23]. This range of applications is based on the polymer ability to bind mineral and organo-mineral particles to larger aggregates or a monolithic body. The growing contribution of polymers to solve the above problems is associated with the fact that traditional binders and additives (Portland cement, slaked lime, bitumen, microsilica, etc.) [24, 25, 26] seem to be not sufficiently friendly from the ecological viewpoint. Their production is accompanied by significant emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere [27]. In connection with this, polymeric binders such as urea-formaldehyde resins, polyvinyl acetate, polyvinyl alcohol, polyacrylamide, and polyurethanes are successfully introduced into practice [28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33]. As for the soil or ground treatment, two basic methods are recognized: mixing of aqueous polymer formulation with the substrate [34] and deposition of the formulations over the substrate surface [35]. In the first case, the polymers were mixed with the soil and distributed to a depth of up to 30 cm. The stabilizing effect is achieved at a polymer consumption of several tons per hectare; natural polymers, i.e., polysaccharides, quickly decomposed when introduced into the soil and ceased to work as stabilizers. The replacement of natural polymers with synthetic ones allowed to eliminate the problem of polymer degradation, but did not lead to a decrease in the consumption of polymers. In the second case, deposition of an aqueous polymer formulation resulted in a sharp reduction in the consumption of polymers, which now formed a rather thin protective polymer-soil surface layer, typically ca. 5 mm deep, which prevented mechanical destruction of soil and its erosion with water and wind [36; 37]. The stabilization was due to inter-particle binding or \"physical crosslinking\" of particles with polymers and the formation of continuous protective coatings [38; 39]. Recently, interpolyelectrolyte complexes (IPEC) were proposed as promising soil ameliorants [11; 40]. IPEC are the products of electrostatic interaction between two oppositely charged ionic polymers (polyelectrolytes, PEs) [41]. Variation of the IPEC composition allows one to adjust the structure and control the mechanical properties and erosion resistance of the soil-IPEC protective coatings [11]. The IPECs based on linear ionic polymers ensure an acceptable mechanical stability of the coatings [11; 42; 43], their moisture and air permeability [11], and a stimulating effect on the germination and development of plants [11; 44]. However, these coatings are characterized by rather high rigidity that restricts their application, for example, when fixing the area with the complicated relief configuration. The elasticity of the coating can be improved using latexes--aqueous suspensions of the rubbery polymeric microspheres [45; 46]. To summarize, polymer-soil protective coatings require desired mechanical properties associated with the controlled rigidity-elasticity balance and high water and wind resistance. To advance in this problem, the polymer-colloid mixtures of rubbery latexes and rigid IPECs seem to be the most promising formulations. In this article, the complexation of anionic butadiene-styrene microspheres and cationic linear poly(diallyddimethylammonium chloride) (PDADMAC) and mechanical behavior of the resulting microsphere/PDADMAC binary films are described.