Monolayer Ostwald ripening

Transfer of water molecules (in evaporation control), transport of solvent across monolayers at oil-water interfaces (in Ostwald-ripening of emulsions) and transfer of ions across such interfaces (as models for ion conduction in bilayers and membranes) can often be treated in terms of surface concentration fluctuations. Their magnitudes can be expressed in standard deviations (cr for the standard deviation in the surface concentration), which are measures of the probability that random holes are formed in the layer, allowing material transport. We have presented the formal treatment in sec. 1.3.7. From this section we can immediately obtain = IcTOr / 0 ), for a Gibbs monolayer, with... 

The Ostwald ripening process had been previously investigated in monolayers of tetradodecyloctathio-phene (6) deposited from a 1,2,4-thrichlorobenzene solution [38]. The process was followed by STM in real time, on the molecular length scale. On a time scale of seconds, the size decrease of small domains up to their disappearance was paralleled by the increase in size of larger domains. Over a period of several minutes to a few hours, single crystals of micrometer size developed from 2D polycrystals. The rate of the Ostwald ripening process was controlled by the reorientation of the domain boundaries of the 2D polycrystais. 

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