To perform APTES coating on glass coverslips and AFM tips, you can try THF .

Hi,

You should go over the purification of solvents in 'Purification of Laboratory Chemicals'' this will give you an idea which solvents do/do not tend to have water in them. From my experiance DCM and benzene usually has low water concentration, furthermore if most solvents require distillation for various reagents to get rid of most of the water, then for benzene regular molecular sieves work as good as any other method giving extremely dry solvent.

Cheers,

Kaspars

In chemistry, 'like prefers like' and thus non-polar solvents (such as hexane/heptane) will tend to be miscible with non-polar components (and will contain very little free water). Similarly for polar solvents.  Now APTES is an aminosilane frequently for silanization of surfaces.  It's highly polar and thus will favor other polar solvents such as DMF, THF (as mentioned above), DMSO etc. This also means that it will favor moisture absorption as water is a polar solvent. Thus your request for the 'best anhydrous organic solvent' contains a dichotomy - you'll find a solvent that has little water content (e.g. hexane) but with have limited solubility of your material.  My suggestion is to take a suitable solvent (that actually dissolves your material in the correct quantity - [C] and spin rate govern the final thickness - and dry over anhydrous sodium sulfate or similar to reduce any water content.