Regensburg 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 60: Plasmonics and Nanooptics: Fabrication, Characterization and Applications I

O 60.8: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 19. März 2025, 12:15–12:30, H8

In-situ Plasmonic Sensing of Surfactant Structures — •Esmée Berger¹, Narjes Khosravian¹, Ferry Nugroho², Joakim Löfgren³, Christoph Langhammer¹, and Paul Erhart¹ — ¹Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden — ²Department of Physics, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia — ³Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

Surfactants play an important role in many areas of chemistry and have immense technological relevance. Their functionality is dictated by their frequently complex phase diagrams, which are very difficult to probe, especially in situ. Here, by combining experiment and multi-scale modeling, we demonstrate that the structure and dynamics of surfactant layers can be very efficiently probed using plasmonic sensing. Considering a prototypical surfactant-surface system (CTAB on silica), we show that the plasmonic response not only reveals changes in the structure of the surfactant layer as the CTAB concentration varies but also provides access to the kinetics of the phase transition. The approach demonstrated in the present work is minimally intrusive, efficient, and widely applicable. It thus constitutes a very powerful tool for exploring surfactant-surface structures, representing a large step forward in understanding these systems of enormous scientific and technological importance.

Keywords: CTAB; Plasmonic sensing; Surfactant structure; Surfactant phase transition; Multi-scale modeling