title: Imaging interfacial micro- and nano-bubbles by scanning transmission soft X-ray microscopy.
abstract: Synchrotron-based scanning transmission soft X-ray microscopy (STXM) with nanometer resolution was used to investigate the existence and behavior of interfacial gas nanobubbles confined between two silicon nitride windows. The observed nanobubbles of SF6 and Ne with diameters smaller than 2.5 µm were quite stable. However, larger bubbles became unstable and grew during the soft X-ray imaging, indicating that stable nanobubbles may have a length scale, which is consistent with a previous report using atomic force microscopy [Zhang et al. (2010), Soft Matter, 6, 4515-4519]. Here, it is shown that STXM is a promising technique for studying the aggregation of gases near the solid/water interfaces at the nanometer scale.
authors.affiliation: Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, People's Republic of China. zhanglijuan@sinap.ac.cn,
authors.forename: Lijuan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Binyu
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Lian
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.forename: Zhi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Yaming
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: Haiping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.forename: Renzhong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tai
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hu
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005740:Gases / Q000032:analysis*; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D017348:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning Transmission / Q000295:instrumentation*; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000032:analysis* / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D017356:Synchrotrons / Q000295:instrumentation*
chemical_list: D005740:Gases
keywords: interfacial science; nanobubbles; scanning transmission soft X-ray microscopy