Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA ; Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena (CRISP), Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA ; Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara 06800, Turkey.
Beilstein J Nanotechnol. 2012;3:637-50. doi: 10.3762/bjnano.3.73. Epub 2012 Sep 11.
Noncontact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) is being increasingly used to measure the interaction force between an atomically sharp probe tip and surfaces of interest, as a function of the three spatial dimensions, with picometer and piconewton accuracy. Since the results of such measurements may be affected by piezo nonlinearities, thermal and electronic drift, tip asymmetries, and elastic deformation of the tip apex, these effects need to be considered during image interpretation.In this paper, we analyze their impact on the acquired data, compare different methods to record atomic-resolution surface force fields, and determine the approaches that suffer the least from the associated artifacts. The related discussion underscores the idea that since force fields recorded by using NC-AFM always reflect the properties of both the sample and the probe tip, efforts to reduce unwanted effects of the tip on recorded data are indispensable for the extraction of detailed information about the atomic-scale properties of the surface.
非接触原子力显微镜（NC-AFM）正越来越多地被用于测量原子级锋利探针尖端与感兴趣表面之间的相互作用力，作为三个空间维度的函数，具有皮米和皮牛顿的精度。由于这些测量的结果可能受到压电力非线性、热和电子漂移、尖端不对称和尖端顶点的弹性变形的影响，因此在图像解释期间需要考虑这些影响。在本文中，我们分析了它们对所获得数据的影响，比较了记录原子分辨率表面力场的不同方法，并确定了受相关伪影影响最小的方法。相关讨论强调了这样一个观点，即由于使用 NC-AFM 记录的力场总是反映样品和探针尖端的特性，因此努力减少尖端对记录数据的不利影响对于提取关于表面原子尺度特性的详细信息是必不可少的。
