Contact angle measurements, study

Section 4.1 briefly describes some of the commonly employed experimental tools and procedures. Chaudhury et al., Israelachvili et al. and Tirrell et al. employed contact mechanics based approach to estimate surface energies of different self-assembled monolayers and polymers. In these studies, the results of these measurements were compared to the results of contact angle measurements. These measurements are reviewed in Section 4.2. The JKR type measurements are discussed in Section 4.2.1, and the measurements done using the surface forces apparatus (SFA) are reviewed in Section 4.2.2. 

The surface forces apparatus (Section 2.3) enables the estimation of a surface energy term, Fq (Eq. 9), providing sufficiently smooth surfaces can be produced. In recent years Chaudhury, Pocius and colleagues have made a valuable contribution to the field of adhesion by developing the technique to study energies of adhesion and of surface energies of polymers [81-85]. These SFA results provide alternatives to values based on traditional destructive tests or contact angle measurements. 

Upadhyay et al. [98] used primarily correlated XPS and water contact angle measurements to study the surface degradation and recovery of amorphous films of a PMMA and a poly (aryl ether ether ketone) (PEEK). Surface modification of the films was carried out in a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) unit, samples being treated with different dose levels of dielectric discharge. The modified (treated) samples were then stored for one month and re-examined. Figure 35 shows C(ls) and 0(1 s) XPS envelopes and their curve-fitting deconvolutions,... 

The surface properties as studied by contact angle measurement are not affected much by the composition of reacting solution so far the solvent is the same. Wettability of all samples plotted in Figures 2 and 3 depends merely on the total amount of graft polymer and the contact angle - IR absorbance plots fall on the same line as shown in Figure 7. 

For the DMFC, Zhang et al. [127] used the sessile drop method to study the wettabilities of liquid methanol solutions on the surface of the anode DLs and MPLs. They were able to observe that the contact angles of the materials were the smallest with low PTFE content. In addition, the effect of Nafion ionomer content on the MPL (to increase hydrophilicity see Section 4.3.2) was also shown through the contact angle measurements (i.e., smaller contact angles compared to MPLs with PTFE). 

The adsorption behavor of surfactant onto particles in the absence and presence of pre-adsorbed polymer was determined. Electrokinetic studies of the system were made. Contact angle measurements yielded information on the level of hydrophobicity achieved at various additions of polymer and collector. 

The adsorption of alkyl and aryl isocyanides on Au film [26, 32, 33], powder [36, 37] and nanoparticles [39, 41, 42] has been studied using several different techniques IR methods (RAIR, ATR-IR, DRIFT), Raman methods (SERS), X-ray methods (NEXAFS), ellipsometry (OE, SWE) and contact angle measurements (ACA). The gold surface is not oxidized under normal conditions consequently, the experiments were performed in air at room temperature. The gold film was obtained by physical vapor deposition of 100-200 nm of gold on different substrates glass [28, 33], mica [33], silicon [25, 27, 31, 32], ZnSe crystal [26]. A... 

Contact angle measurements are of fundamental importance in a range of industrial and everyday processes such as flotation, painting (i.e. the paint must wet the substrate) and weather-proofing. In the flotation process a solid block of the powdered mineral to be floated is often studied using a wide range of collector (i.e. surfactant) solutions to determine optimum flotation conditions. 

In 1985 Allara and Nuzzo [354, 355] published the results of an extensive investigation in which adsorption took place on to an aluminium oxide layer formed on a film of aluminium deposited in vacuo on to a silicon wafer. Various carboxylic acids were dissolved in high purity hexadecane and allowed to adsorb from this solution on to the prepared aluminium oxide surface. The monolayers so formed were examined by ellipsometry and infrared spectroscopy. Contact angle measurements were made on the monolayer surfaces and radioactive labelled (tritiated) compounds were employed to study the interchange of adsorbed molecules with those in solution. Various other techniques of less immediate relevance to our present interests were also employed and reference to these two papers should be made for further particulars. Aluminium... 

DePalma and Tillman investigated self-assembled monolayer films from three silanes, tridecafluorooctyltrichlorosilane, undecyltrichlorosilane, and octadecyl-trichlorosilane, on silicon, a popular model substrate for such studies with great relevance to potential semiconductor coating applications. They characterized the films by ellipsometry and contact angle measurements (data for trideca-fluorooctyltrichlorosilane are included in Table 1), but more usefully from an applicational viewpoint, they carried out friction and wear measurements with a pin-on-disk device where the silicon wafer substrate, coated with monolayer, is moved under a spherical glass slider. Optical microscopy was used to assess wear. Table 2 summarizes DePalma and Tillman s data and their comparison with the classical self-assembled monolayer friction studies of Levine and Zisman [18]. 

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