I am studying the surface topography of bacteria-degraded cellulose and lignin using the non-contact mode of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), which requires a solvent to make a dispersion of the powdered material. Can we use water as a good solvent for this analysis?
Water can certainly work. As you dry your sample the fibers will tend to move with the water. I've had some success solvent exchanging with ethanol. Either way, even dry, you will end up with about a nm water layer on your samples. I dried my samples with nitrogen then kept them in a nitrogen atmosphere until analysis to minimize the amount of absorbed water.
If you have a lot of lignin you may run into issues rehydrating it. DMSO will work but I'm uncertain how easy it will be to develop a good sample for AFM analysis.
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