Abstract
Hydrophobic effect plays an important role in a wide range of natural phenomena and engineering applications, such as mineral froth flotation. In this work, atomic force microscope (AFM) force mapping was employed, for the first time, to probe the nanoscale heterogeneity of surface hydrophobicity and surface interactions on the sphalerite mineral surface before/after conditioning treatment (activated by copper sulfate and then treated by amyl xantahte). The AFM force mapping demonstrates that adhesion on sphalerite falls in a narrow range with a peak centered at 16.4 mN/m and adhesion on conditioned sphalerite falls in a wide range with a small peak centered at 15.5 mN/m and a large peak centered at 58.1 mN/m. It is evident that the sphalerite surface is hydrophilic with homogeneous surface hydrophobicity whereas conditioned sphalerite exhibits a heterogeneous distribution of surface hydrophobicity due to the nonuniform adsorption of xanthate. The significantly enhanced adhesion after conditioning treatme...
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