Interfacial nanobubbles (INBs) on a solid surface in contact with water have drawn widespread research interest. Although several theoretical models have been proposed to explain their apparent long lifetimes, the underlying mechanism still remains in dispute. In this work, the morphological evolution of INBs was examined in air-equilibrated and partially degassed water with the use of atomic f...

Oil droplets loaded with surfactant propel themselves with a velocity up to 6 mm s(-1) when they are placed in an aqueous phase of NaOH solution or buffer solution. The required driving force for such motion is generated on the interface of the droplets by the change in interfacial tension, due to deprotonation of the surfactant. This force induces Marangoni convection, which gives rise to a ci...

The chemical surfactant flooding can mobilize the trapped oil by lowering the interfacial tension between oil and brine and in some cases altering the reservoir rock wettability. In this work, the effect of surfactants on oil/brine interfacial tension was experimentally investigated. First, the effect of surfactants concentration was surveyed. Afterwards, the effect of salinity on surfactant be...

We developed a novel method for fabrication of glass micromodels with varying depth (2.5-D) with no additional complexity over the 2-D micromodels' fabrication. Compared to a 2-D micromodel, the 2.5-D micromodel can better represent the 3-D features of multi-phase flow in real porous media, as demonstrated in this paper with three different examples. Physically realistic capillary snap-off and ...

Ion distributions play a central role in various settings-from biology, where they mediate the electrostatic interactions between charged biomolecules in solution, to energy storage devices, where they influence the charging properties of supercapacitors. These distributions are determined by interactions dictated by the chemical properties of the ions and their environment as well as the long-...

We measured normal and friction forces simultaneously using a recently developed cantilever-based optical interfacial force microscope technique for studies of interfacial structures and mechanical properties of nanoscale materials. We derived how the forces can be incorporated into the detection signal using the classical Euler equation for beams. A lateral modulation with the amplitude of nan...

We investigated by means of polarization microscopy the influence of a magnetic field on the shape and director field of nematic droplets in dispersions of plate-like colloidal particles. To interpret the experimental observations, we put forward a simple theory in which we presume strong anchoring and a sphero-cylindrical droplet shape. This model allows us to extract values for the interfacia...

Membrane separation is an important processing technology used for separating food ingredients and fractionating value-added components from food processing byproducts. Long-term performance of polymeric membranes in food protein processing is impeded by the formation of fouled layers on the membrane surface as a result of protein adsorption onto the membrane surface. Surface modification of sy...

ozone modification method and air-oxidation were used for the surface treatment of polyacrylonitrile(pan)-based carbon fiber. the surface characteristics of carbon fibers were characterized by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (xps). the interfacial properties of carbon fiber reinforced polyamide 6 (cf/pa6) composites were investigated by means of the single fiber pull-out tests. as a result, it...