Figure 6. Contact angle and line tension.

(a) Distributions of measured contact angles for individual, nominally 20 nm amidine latex nanoparticles (from the same synthesis batch) and corresponding measured size distributions at the water/n-decane (red) and water/n-hexane (blue) interface. Note that the smallest particles are 10 nm in diameter. (b) Line tension τ as a function of radius r for 20 nm for the amidine latex particles at the water/n-decane interface. The solid line is a linear fit. The x-errors stem from the limits to the image resolution in measuring r (1 pixel); the errors in τ are calculated according to equation (S22) in the Supplementary Note 4 and are typically smaller than the symbols.