Microscopic dynamics of nanoparticle monolayers at air-water interface

We present results of surface mechanical and particle tracking measurements of nanoparticles trapped at the air-water interface as a function of their areal density. We monitor both the surface pressure (Π) and isothermal compression modulus (ϵ) as well as the dynamics of nanoparticle clusters, using fluorescence confocal microscopy while they are compressed to very high density near the two dimensional close packing density Φ∼0.82. We observe non-monotonic variation in both ϵ and the dynamic heterogeneity, characterized by the dynamical susceptibility χ4 with Φ, in such high density monolayers. We provide insight into the underlying nature of such transitions in close packed high density nanoparticle monolayers in terms of the morphology and flexibility of these soft colloidal particles. We discuss the significance our results in the context of related studies on two dimensional granular or colloidal systems.