Angulo de contacto en nanopartículas

Investigadores del Laboratory of Surface Science and Technology en ETH Zurich desarrollan técnica para medir ángulo de contacto en nanopartículas tan pequeñas como 10nm.

Contact angle is parameter essentially required for production of new material as it contains all vital information for predicting the behavior of the nanoparticles and now researchers at the Laboratory of Surface Science and Technology at ETH Zurich has successfully developed a procedure for measuring contact angle for nanoparticles as small as 10 nm.

The research finding has been recently published in the journal Nature Communications, where the researchers claim that they have studied liquid or fluid interfaces. Both hydrophilic and hydrophobic materials in the range of few nanometers were studies. The present method doesn’t allow measuring the contact angle below 500 nm and now researchers claim to have measured the contact angle even for very small and well below 500 nm nanoparticles.

As per the new procedure, researchers got an idea of using freeze-fracture technique, which is used by biologists and in this technique samples freeze within microseconds and after scientists fracture the samples and study internal structure using cryo-scanning electron microscope. Using the technique once the nanoparticle samples are fractured, they left hollow mark on the opposite surface and using 1-3 layer metallic coating on the opposite side, researchers were able to measure contact angle much more preciously.

Más información: http://www.surface.mat.ethz.ch