Nano-scale Organization

After reading a paper on surfactant organization on a substrate (Nano-scale Organization; Grant, L.M.; Tiberg, F.; Ducker, W.A., J. Phys. Chem., 1998, 102, 4288-4294), I am wondering if it would be worthwhile to perform experiments with treated as well as untreated silica as a substrate.  The results of the paper showed that with silica that was treated with varying agents, the organization of whatever surfactant they used changed depending on the hydrophobicity of the silica, driven by minimization or maximization of substrate-water interaction.  Although we are changing the substrate environment when we are working with either terraces or troughs, seeing the effects of hydrophobicity on surfactant absorption in the presence or absence of altered substrate topography could also yield interesting data.  However, it is probably best to first determine to what degree we can control the experiment with untreated silica with altered topography before trying this approach.

Q-sense Conference

Q-sense conference went very well and was very informative.  Spoke with some representatives on the possibility of using QCM-D to study the effect of lateral confinement on surfactant absorption. The frequencies involved in the QCM method may cause noise and/or difficulty in analyzing the data when using patterned surfaces but that is it still possible and will still yield accurate results.