This publication describes the physics of the second-generation quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), a primary approach to research for gentle subject at interfaces.

From a tool for measuring movie thickness in vacuum, the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) has long ago 20 years developed right into a flexible tool for interpreting smooth topic at solid/liquid and solid/gas interfaces that came upon functions in various fields together with the lifestyles sciences, fabric technology, polymer learn and electrochemistry. as a result of this luck, the QCM is now getting used by way of scientists with a large choice of backgrounds to check a magnificent range of samples, with complex information research equipment being elaborated alongside the best way. it truly is for those practitioners of the QCM that the e-book is written. It brings throughout simple rules at the back of the approach and the knowledge research tools in adequate element to be academic and in a layout that's obtainable to somebody with an undergraduate point wisdom of any of the actual or ordinary sciences. those ideas problem the research of acoustic shear waves and construct on a few primary actual techniques which many clients of the approach don't frequently stumble upon. they've got opposite numbers in optical spectroscopy, electric engineering, quantum mechanics, rheology and mechanics, making this e-book an invaluable academic source past the QCM itself. the main target is the physics of QCM, yet because the ebook describes the habit of the QCM while uncovered to motion pictures, droplets, polymer brushes, debris, vesicles, nanobubbles and stick-slip, it additionally bargains perception into the habit of soppy subject at interfaces in a extra normal sense.