In-situ Characterization of the Microstructure of Particle Surfaces and Their Interaction Forces by Atomic Force Microscope

Publication Reference: 
ARR-11-21
Author Last Name: 
Higashitani
Authors: 
Ko Higashitani
Report Type: 
ARR - Annual Report
Research Area: 
Characterisation
Publication Year: 
1998
Publication Month: 
02
Country: 
Japan

In the particle technology, it is fundamentally important to know the interaction and adhesive forces between particles and to find the correlation of those forces with the microscopic characteristics of particle surface, because these forces are the origin of many phenomena which particles exhibit, Most investigations on these forces reported so far have been carried out using macroscopic and statistical techniques. Hence it is impossible to clarify the relationship of these forces with the local and microscopic characteristics of the surfaces by which the interaction forces are influenced greatly.

The aim of this research is to clarify on the molecular scale the interaction and adhesive forces between surfaces in various solutions and correlate those with the micro-structure of the surfaces, using an AFM. The following figure illustrates the whole map of experiments which we have done so far and we are going to do in this program.