Atomic force microscopy thin-liquid films

Lagerwall JP, Schiitz C, Salajkova M, Noh J, Park JH, Scalia G, Bergstrom L (2014) Cellulose nanocrystal-based materials from liquid crystal self-assembly and glass formation to multifunctional thin films. NPG Asia Mater 6(l) e80 Lahiji RR, Xu X, Reifenberger R, Raman A, Rudie A, Moon RJ (2010) Atomic force microscopy characterization of cellulose nanocrystals. Langmuir 26 4480-4488 Lu P, Hsieh YL (2009) Cellulose nanocrystal-filled poly (acrylic acid) nanocomposite fibrous membranes. Nanotechnology 20(41) 415604... 

Blodgett (L-B) technique [31 - 33], resulting in mono-, bi- or multilayers allows characterisation of the resulting L-B films by other techniques, e.g., atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray scattering [34] and many others. The present review will be restricted to thin films at liquid surfaces. 

Schonherr, H., Manickam, M., Kumar, S. Surface morphology and molecular ordering in thin films of polymerizable triphenylene discotic liquid crystals on HOPG revetded by atomic force microscopy. Langmuir 18, 7082-7085 (2002)... 

In this chapter we review some data on the interactions between two soUd-liquid or two air-liquid interfaces obtained with a range of surface force techniques. It is beyond the purpose of this chapter to describe the merits and drawbacks of the various methods and the interested reader is referred to the original articles describing the surface force apparatus (SFA) [10], the atomic force microscope (AFM) colloidal probe [11], the thin film balance (TFB) [12] and total internal reflection microscopy (TIRM) [13] as well as a more recent review [14]. It is, however, important to be aware that the different techniques use different interaction geometries, and the results can be compared only by using the Derjaguin approximation [15,16] ... 

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