Abstract
The stability of particle suspensions, which is important in numerous industrial processes, is generally dominated by the interaction forces between the suspended particles. Understanding the interaction forces between surfaces in liquids is therefore fundamentally important in order to evaluate and control how particulates, including fluid droplets in emulsions and air bubbles in foams, behave in various systems. The invention of the surface force apparatus (SFA) enabled the direct measurement of interaction forces in liquids with molecular level resolution and it has led to remarkable progress in understanding surface forces in detail. Following the SFA, the application of atomic force microscopy (AFM) to force measurement has further extended the possibility of force measurements to a broad field of research, mainly due to the range of materials that can be employed. This review provides an overview of developments in the investigation of interaction forces between surfaces using AFM. The properties of various interaction forces, important in particle technology, revealed by the studies using AFM are described in detail.
Highlights
As suspensions of particles play a role in numerous industrial processes, evaluating and controlling particle behavior in various processes is of utmost importance
The surface force apparatus (SFA) enabled the direct measurement of interaction forces both in air (Tabor and Winterton, 1968) and in liquid (Israelachvili and Tabor, 1972) with molecular level resolution, which led to remarkable progress in understanding surface forces in detail
We review the development of investigating the interaction forces between surfaces, mainly focusing on studies using atomic force microscopy (AFM)
Summary
As suspensions of particles play a role in numerous industrial processes, evaluating and controlling particle behavior in various processes is of utmost importance. Rapid developments in nanotechnology over recent years have led to the adaptation of these industrial processes to handle nanosized materials, including nanoparticles, in order to take advantage of their specific functions Because such nanomaterials are often handled in liquids as colloidal dispersions, it has become significantly important to control the properties of nanoparticle suspensions properly and precisely, including their stability, sedimentation and rheology. In the colloid probe technique, a spherical particle is attached to the end of a probe tip and the force is measured between this particle and a flat surface, allowing quantitative evaluation of forces between macroscopic surfaces. This technique can utilize a much wider variety of materials than SFA and has found applications in a wider variety of systems. In most commercial AFMs, approaching the probe to the flat substrate, bringing the surfaces into contact and retracting the probe from the
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