Langmuir probe technique

In order to relate material properties with plasma properties, several plasma diagnostic techniques are used. The main techniques for the characterization of silane-hydrogen deposition plasmas are optical spectroscopy, electrostatic probes, mass spectrometry, and ellipsometry [117, 286]. Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) is a noninvasive technique and has been developed for identification of Si, SiH, Si+, and species in the plasma. Active spectroscopy, such as laser induced fluorescence (LIF), also allows for the detection of radicals in the plasma. Mass spectrometry enables the study of ion and radical chemistry in the discharge, either ex situ or in situ. The Langmuir probe technique is simple and very suitable for measuring plasma characteristics in nonreactive plasmas. In case of silane plasma it can be used, but it is difficult. Ellipsometry is used to follow the deposition process in situ. 

Dean et al. (1974) use a Langmuir probe technique in a rare gas repetitive afterglow plasma. The electron temperature is extracted from the semi-log plot... 

Food typically is a complicated system with diverse interfaces. Stable air-water or oil-water interfaces are essential for the production of food foams and emulsions. Interface phenomena, therefore, attract great interest in the food industry. AFM provides enough resolution to visualize the interface structures, but it cannot be directly applied on air-liquid or liquid-liquid interfaces. Fortunately, the interface structure can be captured and transferred onto a freshly cleaved mica substrate using Langmuir-Blodgett techniques for AFM scan. Images are normally captured under butanol to reduce adhesion between the probe and the sample. Then, sample distortion or damage can be avoided (Morris et al, 1999). 

A decade ago, while considerable data had been compiled on the kinetic measurement of dissociative recombination (DR) reactions of small polyatomic ions, laboratory information on the product distributions of such reactions was restricted to the results of a few merged-beam and stationary-afterglow studies on DR of C02 and of H( [157,158], and the first explorations of combined flow tube/Langmuir probe/spectroscopic detector techniques, independently pursued by Rowe and co-workers (at Rennes) [159,160] and by Adams and co-work-ers (at Birmingham, and subsequently Atlanta) [161, 162]. Considerable advances have since been made, both in measurement of recombination coefficients (particularly for larger ions) and in the elucidation of product distributions for a still small but growing sample of important IS ions. 

Gan, Y., Franks, G.V. (2006). Charging Behavior of the Gibbsite Basal (001) Surface in NaCl Solution Investigated by AFM Colloidal Probe Technique. Langmuir Vol. 22, pp. 6087-6092. 

Nalaskowski, J., Drehch, J., Hupka, J., and Miller, J. D. 2003. Adhesion between hydrocarbon particles and silica surfaces with different degrees of hydration as determined by the AFM colloidal probe technique. Langmuir 19 5311. 

Investigation of cellulose systems in closer detail requires the choice of representative cellulose model surfaces for the experiment. A spin-coated cellulose surface on mica was the first model surface used in studies of forces in papermaking systems (70). This work was followed by other SFA studies using Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films of cellulose (11-14). These films are noticeably smoother and more stable than spin-coated surfaces. In studies using the atomic force microscope (AFM) colloidal probe technique (Ducker et al. (75)), interaction forces were measured either between two cellulose beads (16,17) or between cellulose beads and spin-coated cellulose surfaces (18,19). 

Any surface or interface breaks the inversion symmetry and is therefore a possible source of second-order effects. Owing to their surface sensitivity, second-harmonic generation measurements have developed into a very useful tool for probing the orientation of organic molecules in well-structured monolayers, such as those obtainable by the Langmuir-Blodgett technique (see Table 6). The surface susceptibility may in general be written as... 

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