Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy at the oil-water interface: hard disk diffusion behavior in dilute beta-lactoglobulin layers precedes monolayer formation.

We have performed a thorough characterization of fluorescence correlations spectroscopy (FCS) applied to oil-water interfaces of viscous oil droplets in aqueous solution, including numerical wave-optical calculations of the detection geometry and regularized multicomponent analysis of sample data. It is shown how significant errors in the estimation of the surface concentration can be avoided when FCS is applied to an interface region. We present data on the adsorption dynamics of beta-lactoglobulin (BLG), a well-studied model system. It is found that electrostatic repulsion slows the adsorption process and reduces the initial saturation density far below the monolayer concentration. During the first stages of adsorption, the diffusion coefficients of adsorbed protein closely follow the 2D hard disk model of Lahtinen et al.1 in response to increased surface concentration, which suggests that protein-protein interactions are limited to long-range Coulombic interactions at this stage.