Novel needle microbalance for adsorption studies

Microbalances an quite often used in the investigation of adsorption phenomena. In this article we describe a novel "needle" microbalance characterized by a magnetic restoring torque particularly fit to study the growth of thick films on solid surfaces. In particular, it does not present any particular problem in the study of thick solid films which generally affect the stiffness of the restoring springs, present in nearly all mechanical devices, in a difficult to predict way. Another important feature of this microbalance is that its use is not Limited to one specific adsorbing solid surface. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.