Department of Chemical Engineering, McGill University , Montreal, Quebec H3A 2B2, Canada.
ACS Nano. 2013 Sep 24;7(9):7833-43. doi: 10.1021/nn402758w. Epub 2013 Aug 21.
A quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D) monitoring can be an alternative tool to characterize nanoparticle size by virtue of its acoustic principle to sense adsorbed mass. In this study, sizes obtained by QCM-D for polymer-coated metallic nanoparticles and polydisperse polystyrene latex particle suspensions were compared with those obtained by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS). We describe the obtained "QCM-D mass", which is weighted over surface area, by a general particle height distribution equation that can be used to determine the average particle diameter of a distribution of particles deposited on the QCM-D surface. Because the particle height distribution equation can be used for any particle geometry and surface packing geometry, it is described how the QCM-D can also be used to study the orientation of deposited nonspherical particles. Herein, the mean nanoparticle sizes obtained by QCM-D were generally in closer agreement with the primary particle size determined by TEM than with the sizes obtained by DLS, suggesting that primarily smaller particles within the particle population deposited on the sensor surface. Overall, the results from this study demonstrate that QCM-D could serve as an alternative and/or complementary means to characterize the size of nanoparticles deposited on a surface from suspensions of varying complexity.
石英晶体微天平（QCM-D）监测可以作为一种替代工具，通过其声学原理来感知吸附质量，从而对纳米颗粒的大小进行特征化。在这项研究中，通过 QCM-D 获得的聚合物包覆金属纳米颗粒和多分散聚苯乙烯乳胶颗粒悬浮液的粒径与通过透射电子显微镜（TEM）和动态光散射（DLS）获得的粒径进行了比较。我们描述了通过通用颗粒高度分布方程获得的“QCM-D 质量”，该方程可用于确定沉积在 QCM-D 表面上的颗粒分布的平均粒径。由于颗粒高度分布方程可用于任何颗粒几何形状和表面堆积几何形状，因此描述了 QCM-D 如何用于研究沉积非球形颗粒的取向。在此，通过 QCM-D 获得的平均纳米颗粒尺寸通常与 TEM 确定的初级颗粒尺寸更接近，而与 DLS 获得的尺寸更接近，这表明在沉积在传感器表面上的颗粒群体中主要是较小的颗粒。总的来说，这项研究的结果表明，QCM-D 可以作为一种替代方法和/或补充手段，从不同复杂程度的悬浮液中对沉积在表面上的纳米颗粒的大小进行特征化。
