Applications of the quartz crystal microbalance in energy and environmental sciences: From flow assurance to nanotechnology

In the last decade, there has been a swift development in several scientific research works in which the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) technique has played a critical role in unravelling different aspects of energy and environmental materials and biological substances as well as all corresponding molecular interactions within those media. We comprehensively review the numerous types of surface chemistries, including but not limited to hydrogen bonding, hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions, self-assembled monolayers and ionic bonding, that are monitored using QCMs in a variety of fields such as energy and chemical industries in addition to the biology, medicine and nanotechnology disciplines. Furthermore, we critically review the QCM's diverse applications, which include the detection of organic and inorganic scale formation and deposition onto solid surfaces and evaluation of respective inhibitors, monitoring of adsorption/desorption of hydrocarbon surface-active species onto/from solid rock surface, detection of virions on the surface, diagnostics of various diseases, detection of protein aggregation, and detection of medicines. Focusing on the recent growth of applications of QCMs in each field within the last few years, some of the barriers, limitations, and prospective uses are succinctly highlighted. We hope that this review can pave the way for other researchers worldwide to expand their surface chemistry studies in the abovementioned fields using QCM based technologies.