基于AFM胶体探针测量液固界面DLVO力及表面电势

表面电势是微纳流控芯片中流体流动的重要参数。本文介绍了基于AFM胶体探针技术测量液固界面DLVO力并进一步测量表面电势及表面电荷密度的方法。本文改进了胶体探针制作的技术手段，并提出用双探针法测量胶体探针的弹性系数。在0.1~1mM浓度范围内的NaCl溶液中，测量了硅、二氧化硅和氮化硅液固界面双电层内的DLVO力及表面电势。实验结果表明胶体探针技术可以很好地测量液固界面的DLVO力，尤其对静电力指数变化段非常敏感。通过DLVO力曲线可以间接测量表面电势、表面电荷密度等重要参数，是微纳流动及界面属性测量的有效手段。此外，在不同硅基材料表面的测量结果显示了硅烷醇基密度对表面电势起主导作用，可以通过选用不同硅烷醇基密度的材料来有效调控表面电势，从而在硅基材料制作的微流控芯片中调控电动流动的强弱。

Measuring DLVO force and surface potential based on AFM colloidal probe technique at liquid-solid interfaces

Surface potential is an important parameter of the fluid flow in microfluidics. This study develops a method to measure the surface potential and surface charge density based on the DLVO force obtained by colloidal probe technique using atomic force microscope (AFM). A novel procedure of colloidal probe fabrication is proposed, and then a cantilever-to-cantilever calibration method is used to determine the spring constant of the colloidal probe. We thus measure DLVO forces and surface potentials of silicon, silica and silicon nitride substrates, in 0.1 mM to 1 mM NaCl solutions respectively. The results show that our approach could well measure the DLVO forces at the liquid-solid interfaces, which is especially sensitive to the exponential variation of the electrostatic force. The surface potential, the surface charge density and other important parameters can be obtained via fitting the force curves. Additionally, the variation of surface potentials at different silicon-based surfaces indicates that the density of silane groups plays a dominant role on the surface potential. Thus it is possible to effectively control the surface potential by changing the silane density of the silicon-based materials. The findings could be valuable to regulating electro kinetic flow intensity in microfluidic chips.