Particle Adhesion: Applications and Advances

Whenever a curved surface interacts with another surface, the principles of adhesion are at work. From the cells in your body to the dust on your glasses, intermolecular forces cause materials to attract one another. Elastic deformations resulting from these adhesive interactions store strain that can be liberated during particle detachment. Time dependent changes in adhesion can result from plastic deformation that both increases the real effective contact area and reduces the stored energy available to assist in particle removal. Processes such as these, based on the fundamentals tenets of particle adhesion, are now finding applications across many disciplines leading to a rich and rapid development of knowledge.

This book documents the use of particle adhesion concepts in a variety of disciplines. Fields as varied as the cleaning of semiconductors, to the controlling of cancer metastasis, to the abatement of environmental pollution all benefit from applications of particle adhesion concepts.