Department of Basic and Applied Sciences for Engineering, University of Rome Sapienza, Rome, Italy.
Anal Bioanal Chem. 2013 Feb;405(5):1463-78. doi: 10.1007/s00216-012-6419-3. Epub 2012 Oct 4.
Polymeric thin films have been awakening continuous and growing interest for application in nanotechnology. For such applications, the assessment of their (nano)mechanical properties is a key issue, since they may dramatically vary between the bulk and the thin film state, even for the same polymer. Therefore, techniques are required for the in situ characterization of mechanical properties of thin films that must be nondestructive or only minimally destructive. Also, they must also be able to probe nanometer-thick ultrathin films and layers and capable of imaging the mechanical properties of the sample with nanometer lateral resolution, since, for instance, at these scales blends or copolymers are not uniform, their phases being separated. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been proposed as a tool for the development of a number of techniques that match such requirements. In this review, we describe the state of the art of the main AFM-based methods for qualitative and quantitative single-point measurements and imaging of mechanical properties of polymeric thin films, illustrating their specific merits and limitations.
聚合物薄膜因其在纳米技术中的应用而引起了持续且不断增长的关注。对于此类应用，评估其（纳米）力学性能是一个关键问题，因为即使对于相同的聚合物，其在薄膜状态和块体状态之间也可能会有显著的差异。因此，需要采用非破坏性或微破坏性的原位技术来对薄膜的力学性能进行表征。此外，这些技术还必须能够探测纳米级的超薄薄膜和层，并且能够以纳米级的横向分辨率对样品的力学性能进行成像，因为例如在这些尺度下，共混物或共聚物是不均匀的，其相分离。原子力显微镜（AFM）已被提议作为开发满足这些要求的多种技术的工具。在这篇综述中，我们描述了基于 AFM 的主要单点测量和成像方法在定性和定量测量聚合物薄膜力学性能方面的最新进展，说明了它们各自的优点和局限性。
