Force microscopy: Measurement of local interfacial forces and surface stresses

Enhanced stochastic fluctuations to measure steep adhesive energy landscapes

Free-energy landscapes govern the behavior of all interactions in the presence of thermal fluctuations in the fields of physical chemistry, materials sciences, and the biological sciences. From the energy landscape, critical information about an interaction, such as the reaction kinetic rates, bond lifetimes, and the presence of intermediate states, can be determined. Despite the importance of energy landscapes to understanding reaction mechanisms, most experiments do not directly measure energy landscapes, particularly for interactions with steep force gradients that lead to premature jump to contact of the probe and insufficient sampling of transition regions. Here we present an atomic force microscopy (AFM) approach for measuring energy landscapes that increases sampling of strongly adhesive interactions by using white-noise excitation to enhance the cantilever's thermal fluctuations. The enhanced fluctuations enable the recording of subtle deviations from a harmonic potential to accurately reconstruct interfacial energy landscapes with steep gradients. Comparing the measured energy landscape with adhesive force measurements reveals the existence of an optimal excitation voltage that enables the cantilever fluctuations to fully sample the shape and depth of the energy surface.

Surfactant adsorption to soil components and soils

Soils are complex and widely varying mixtures of organic matter and inorganic materials; adsorption of surfactants to soils is therefore related to the soil composition. We first discuss the properties of surfactants, including the critical micelle concentration (CMC) and surfactant adsorption on water/air interfaces, the latter gives an impression of surfactant adsorption to a hydrophobic surface and illustrates the importance of the CMC for the adsorption process. Then attention is paid to the most important types of soil particles: humic and fulvic acids, silica, metal oxides and layered aluminosilicates. Information is provided on their structure, surface properties and primary (proton) charge characteristics, which are all important for surfactant binding. Subsequently, the adsorption of different types of surfactants on these individual soil components is discussed in detail, based on mainly experimental results and considering the specific (chemical) and electrostatic interactions, with hydrophobic attraction as an important component of the specific interactions. Adsorption models that can describe the features semi-quantitatively are briefly discussed. In the last part of the paper some trends of surfactant adsorption on soils are briefly discussed together with some complications that may occur and finally the consequences of surfactant adsorption for soil colloidal stability and permeability are considered. When we seek to understand the fate of surfactants in soil and aqueous environments, the hydrophobicity and charge density of the soil or soil particles, must be considered together with the structure, hydrophobicity and charge of the surfactants, because these factors affect the adsorption. The pH and ionic strength are important parameters with respect to the charge density of the particles. As surfactant adsorption influences soil structure and permeability, insight in surfactant adsorption to soil particles is useful for good soil management.

Comparison between inhomogeneous adsorption of charged surfactants on air-water and on solid-water interfaces by self-consistent field theory

We use a realistic molecular model to study the interfacial behavior of hydrocarbon sulfate surfactants within a self-consistent field model and consider the adsorption both at the air-water interface and at a hydrophobic solid-water interface. We focus on the structural properties of the hemimicelles at the critical interface aggregation concentration (CIAC) for the air-water system and the critical surface aggregation concentration (CSAC) for the solid-water system. The major difference between the two systems is that the liquid interface is penetrable but the solid surface is intrinsically impenetrable for the molecular species. At the LG interface the hemimicelles have a lens shape with their centers of mass positioned slightly toward the aqueous side and feature an aspect ratio of approximately 2, with the long dimension parallel to the interface. Hemimicelle formation occurs below a critical (interfacial) area per molecule and above a critical surface pressure depending on tail length and ionic strength. Hemimicelles are not expected at air-water interfaces for a surfactant with a tail length ( t) lower than 15 CH2 units. In contrast, at a hydrophobic solid the formation of laterally inhomogeneous micelles even takes place for surfactants with the tail length as short as t = 12. This difference is attributed to the screening of the lateral interactions in the vapor phase. The shape of surface hemimicelles is caplike (or half-lens) with an aspect ratio lower than 2 and the long dimension parallel to the solid surface. The tail length, the ionic strength, the adsorption energies, and the surfactant concentration have an effect on the surface micelle properties such as the aggregation number and size and shape.

Normal and lateral forces between lipid covered solids in solution: correlation with layer packing and structure

We report on the normal and lateral forces between controlled-density mono- and bilayers of phospholipid co-adsorbed onto hydrophobic and hydrophilic solid supports, respectively. Interactions between 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine layers were measured using an atomic force microscope. Notable features of the normal force curves (barrier heights and widths) were found to correlate with the thickness and density of the supported lipid layers. The friction and normal force curves were also found interrelated. Thus, very low friction values were measured as long as the supported layer(s) resisted the normal pressure of the tip. However, as the applied load exceeded the critical value needed for puncturing the layers, the friction jumped to values close to those recorded between bare surfaces. The lipid layers were self-healing between measurements, but a significant hysteresis was observed in the force curves measured on approach and retraction, respectively. The study shows the potential of using atomic force microscopy for lipid layer characterization both with respect to structure and interactions. It further shows the strong lubricating effect of adsorbed lipid layers and how this varies with surface density of lipids. The findings may have important implications for the issue of joint lubrication.

Thermal noise reduction of mechanical oscillators by actively controlled external dissipative forces

We show that the thermal fluctuations of very soft mechanical oscillators, such as the cantilever in an atomic force microscope (AFM), can be reduced without changing the stiffness of the spring or having to lower the environment temperature. We derive a theoretical relationship between the thermal fluctuations of an oscillator and an actively controlled external dissipative force. This relationship is verified by experiments with an AFM cantilever where the external active force is coupled through a magnetic field. With simple instrumentation, we have reduced the thermal noise amplitude of the cantilever by a factor of 3.4, achieving an apparent temperature of 25 K with the environment at 295 K. This active noise reduction approach can significantly improve the accuracy of static position or static force measurements in a number of practical applications.

Force measurements on myelin basic protein adsorbed to mica and lipid bilayer surfaces done with the atomic force microscope

The mechanical and adhesion properties of myelin basic protein (MBP) are important for its function, namely the compaction of the myelin sheath. To get more information about these properties we used atomic force microscopy to study tip-sample interaction of mica and mixed dioleoylphosphatidylserine (DOPS) (20%)/egg phosphatidylcholine (EPC) (80%) lipid bilayer surfaces in the absence and presence of bovine MBP. On mica or DOPS/EPC bilayers a short-range repulsive force (decay length 1.0-1.3 nm) was observed during the approach. The presence of MBP always led to an attractive force between tip and sample. When retracting the tip again, force curves on mica and on lipid layers were different. While attached to the mica surface, the MBP molecules exhibited elastic stretching behavior that agreed with the worm-like chain model, yielding a persistence length of 0.5 +/- 0.25 nm and an average contour length of 53 +/- 19 nm. MBP attached to a lipid bilayer did not show elastic stretching behavior. This shows that the protein adopts a different conformation when in contact with lipids. The lipid bilayer is strongly modified by MBP attachment, indicating formation of MBP-lipid complexes and possibly disruption of the original bilayer structure.