Sakamoto et al. (Langmuir 2002, 18, 5713) conducted AFM force measurements between silica sphere and fused-silica plate in aqueous octadecyltrimethylammonium chloride (C18TACl) solutions and concluded that long-range attractive force is not observed in carefully degassed solutions. In the present work, AFM force measurements were conducted by following the procedures described by Sakamoto et al. The results showed the presence of an attractive force that was much stronger than the van der Waals force both in air-saturated and degassed solutions. The force was most attractive at 5 x 10(-6) M C18TACl, where contact angle was maximum. At this concentration, which is close to the charge compensation point (ccp) of the glass sphere, the long-range decay lengths (D) were 34 and 38 nm in air-saturated and degassed solutions, respectively. At 10(-5) M, the decay length decreased from 30 to 4 nm upon degassing. This decrease in decay length can be explained by a pH increase (from 5.7 to 6.6), which in turn causes additional surfactant molecules to adsorb on the surface with inverse orientation. The attractive force was screened by an added electrolyte (NaCl), indicating that the attractive force may be of electrostatic origin. Therefore, the very long decay lengths observed in the absence of electrolyte may be ascribed to the fact that the ccp occurs at a very low surfactant concentration.

The phase behavior as well as the microstructures of the dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB)/sodium laurate (SL) aqueous two-phase system has been studied. By using FF-TEM, dynamic light scattering (DLS), a viscosity meter, and polarization microscopy, the effects of surfactant concentration and mixing ratio, temperature, salt concentration, and additives (octanol and toluene) on the phase separation have been systematically investigated. The phase separation is found to be strongly dependent on the variation of the surfactant aggregates. The different kinds of aqueous surfactant two-phase system can transit between each other upon the variation of the mixing ratio, the change of the salt concentration, and the addition of toluene and octanol.

Optical measurements using an ellipsometer are inconsistent with the existence of continuous air films that are greater than about 0.1 nm in thickness at the interface between water and silicon wafers that have been rendered hydrophobic through the adsorption of silane agents. If adsorbed air consists of discrete bubbles, then the separation between the bubbles must be much greater than the radius of a bubble. For example, an approximate calculation for 80 nm radius bubbles that are attached with the macroscopic contact angle shows that the minimum spacing consistent with our data is in the range of 5 μm to infinite separation, depending on the sample. Although these putative bubbles would be sparsely distributed, we cannot rule out a density that is great enough to affect surface force apparatus measurements. A new variant of the multiple incidence method for ellipsometry is described and used to decrease the error in determining the thickness of adsorbed films.

Marine fungi are potential producers of bioactive compounds that may have pharmacological and medicinal applications. Fungi were cultured from marine brown algae and identified using multiple target genes to confirm phylogenetic placement. These target genes included the internal transcribed spacer (ITS), the nuclear large subunit (LSU), and the β-tubulin region. Various biological activities of marine-derived fungi were evaluated, including their antifungal, antioxidant and cellulolytic enzyme activities. As a result, a total of 50 fungi was isolated from the brown algae Sargassum sp. Among the 50 isolated fungi, Corollospora angusta was the dominant species in this study. The genus Arthrinium showed a relatively strong antifungal activity to all of the target plant pathogenic fungi. In particular, Arthrinium saccharicola KUC21221 showed high radical scavenging activity and the highest activities in terms of filter paper units (0.39 U/mL), endoglucanase activity (0.38 U/mL), and β-glucosidase activity (1.04 U/mL).

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