Magnetic susceptibility measurements of solutions by surface nanodisplacement detection.

A new principle to measure the magnetic susceptibility of a solution was proposed; it utilized the displacement of solution surface caused by the magnetic force applied to the solution. The interfacial displacement was measured with the sensitivity of 5 nm from a change of the interference fringes, so called Newton Ring, generated from the solution surface and an upper surface of a small plano-convex lens on the bottom wall of a cell. The surface displacement measurement was carried out in a homemade cell attached by one or two small Nd-Fe-B magnets. The performance of this method was investigated by the measurements of magnetic susceptibility of manganese(II) chloride solution and some lanthanide(III) solutions. An excellent linear relationship between the magnetic susceptibility and the interfacial displacement was observed for each solution system. Then, it was demonstrated that this relationship could be used for the determination of the magnetic susceptibility of solutions or the concentration of a solute by using the manganese(II) solution as a standard solution.