PeakForce Quantitative Nanomechanical Information for Reverse Micelle Synthesis

PeakForce Quantitative Nanomechanical Mapping (QNM), an atomic force microscopy (AFM) technique that extracts quantitative material property data, was applied to study the infiltration of precursor salts into di-block copolymer reverse micelles to better understand nanoparticle formation. Based on the Young’s modulus map obtained, the relative micelle modulus (unloaded vs loaded) was found to increase with the amount of salt loading. This provides critical in-situ insight into the formation of controllable nanoparticle patterns for energy, biosensing, and optics applications.