Binding Zeolite for liquid imaging

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replied on Tue, Jun 14 2011 3:05 PM

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Verified by David Durham

David,

The answer will strongly depend on the size of the Zeolite that you are trying to image and what exactly you are trying to image. I.e. if the piece is big enough you may be able to simply epoxy it down. If it is a powder, you may want to want to try 'Tempfix" to immobilize the powder so that you may be able to image the exposed parts of the powder particles.

Stefan 

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Igor replied on Wed, Jun 29 2011 11:34 AM

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Verified by Stephen Minne

Hi Dave,

You can also use almost any epoxy but when it is "semi-rigidified" . It will be not too snicky to engulf the particles but sticky enough to keep them bound.  We used that method before to glue nanoparticles to the AFM tips (J Coll.and Interf.Sci., 2007, v. 310:385), and recently to glue particles of various sizes to a flat surface (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2011.04.142). The major advantage of the latter method is that you have a relatively flat surface even for particles of different size (only tops of the particles are seen). This simplify the AFM scanning a lot since the probe does not stick in-between the particles and you can easily find good  part for imaging..

Best regards,

Igor

_____________________________________

Igor Sokolov, Ph.D.

Professor,

Department of Physics,

Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Science,

Director of Nanoengineering and Biotechnology Laboratories Center (NABLAB),

NY Center for Advanced Material Processing (CAMP) ,

Clarkson University,

Potsdam, NY 13699

Phone: 315-268-2375

Fax:     315-268-6610

http://www.clarkson.edu/~isokolov

http://www.clarkson.edu/~nablab

_____________________________________