KSV SPOT
KSV SPOT Manual
Rev. 1.0
16
experiment and the Spot head should be turned on at least 10 minutes before starting an
experiment.
Clean the water surface with utmost care before spreading the substance. The surface
potential is much more sensitive to impurities than the surface pressure.
Always zero the measuring head before spreading any substance on the surface. The
measuring head can be zeroed by choosing Zero SPM from the Controls drop down menu in
the KSV LB Control Software window.
After spreading the substance one should wait a sufficiently long time before the compression
is started. Otherwise all of the solvent may not have evaporated, which can influence the
outcome of the experiment.
Spread as small amount as possible of the substance on the subphase. The surface potential
often increases rapidly long before the surface pressure starts to increase. An ideal shape of
the trough used with surface potential measurements is long and reasonably narrow.
The barrier(s) should never be driven closer than ca. 1 cm to the meter head. This can induce
variations in the results due to static disturbances from the barrier material.
If the surface potential values have to be shown on the screen during the real time experiment
select SP [V] as the other y-axis from the drop down menu in the Graph just after you have
started your experiment.
