Surfactants have many important industrial applications, including stabilization of colloidal dispersions (e.g., detergents), corrosion inhibition, and lubrication. Their formation of ordered colloidal structures, or micelles, on surfaces also makes them attractive as templates for creating nanostructures—making it vital to fully understand their behavior at solid-liquid interfaces. New breakthroughs in video-rate atomic force microscopy (AFM) enable imaging of surfactant micelles with high spatial resolution and high speed like never before. These results are presented in the new application note “Video-Rate AFM Opens New Research Possibilities into Surfactant Behavior at Solid-Liquid Interfaces” from Oxford Instruments Asylum Research. Materials, methods, and movies are presented for CTAB, a common surfactant, using the Asylum Research Cypher VRS Video-Rate AFM. The application note can be downloaded at http://afm.oxinst.com/CTAB.
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