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Nanoscale Condensation Of Water On Self-Assembled Monolayers, Michael James, Tamim A. Darwish, Simone Ciampi, Sven O. Sylvester, Zhaoming Zhang, Albert Ng, J Justin Gooding, Tracey L. Hanley

Australian Institute for Innovative Materials - Papers

We demonstrate that water is almost universally present on apparently dry self-assembled monolayers, even on those considered almost hydrophobic by conventional methods such as water contact goniometry. The structure and kinetics of nanoscale water adsorption onto these surfaces were investigated using X-ray and neutron reflectometry, as well as atomic force microscopy. Condensation of water on hydrophilic surfaces under ambient conditions formed a dense sub-nanometre surface layer; the thickness of which increased with exponentially limiting kinetics. Tapping mode AFM measurements show the presence of nanosized droplets that covered a small percentage (∼2%) of the total surface area, and which became fewer …