ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a broad survey of some of the common techniques used to characterize interfacial properties and properties of nanomaterials on surfaces. Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) is a powerful technique that can measure the mass of material as small as a few nanograms adsorbed to a surface. The quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D), as compared with traditional QCM, offers additional information called dissipation about the materials adsorbed to the QCM crystal surface. The piezoelectric effect is the foundation of a host of technologies. One of the original applications was a piezoelectric device used during the development of sonar in which piezoelectric quartz crystals were used as transducers to detect echoes returning from underwater objects. Ellipsometry is a noncontact and nondestructive technique used for measuring both the thickness and the refractive index of thin films on solid surfaces.