Direct surface force measurement in water using a nanosize colloidal probe technique

The direct force measurement between colloidal surfaces has been an essential topic in both theories and applications of surface chemistry. As particle size is decreased from micron size down to true nano size (<10 nm), surface forces are increasingly important. Nanoparticles at close proximity or high solids loading are expected to show a different behavior than what can be estimated from continuum and mean field theories. The current tools for directly measuring interaction forces such as a surface force apparatus or atomic force microscopy (AFM) are limited to particles much larger than nanosize. Here a modified colloidal probe technique is suggested using a multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWNT) to overcome this problem. Determination of zero separation in AFM is critical to extract a reliable force-separation curve when MWNT is used as a probe. Hence, a systematic approach to the data collection for a nanosize colloidal probe is proposed and a sample of a direct surface force measurement curve obtained with the MWNT probe is presented.