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Application Notes
Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has proven itself to be an effective and versatile tool for the comprehensive characterization of materials with a very high spatial resolution because it can reveal not only their surface structural information but also the local variations of their mechanical, electric and magnetic properties ranging from sub nanometer to micrometer scales from the tip-surface interactions. The basic and most popular AFM imaging is certainly by the contact and intermittent modes that sense mainly the tip-sample mechanical interaction in the vertical and/or lateral direction. As the derivatives from them, the lateral force mode (LFM) is developed with the contact mode, the amplitude and phase imaging comes with the intermittent contact mode. The intermittent contact imaging where an AFM cantilever is mechanically oscillated near its resonance frequency and the AFM tip taps the sample surface with negligible lateral force is particularly favored for imaging soft and/or heterogeneous surfaces because it gives not only a better topography resolution with less damage to the tip and the surface due to the elimination of lateral shear force that is present in the contact mode imaging but also the complementary amplitude and phase information arising from the cantilever modulation change that is perpendicular to the surface. However for surface studies of frictional and tribological properties of viscoelastic materials the contact mode AFM and LFM have played an essential role because regions of enhanced friction force have greater viscoelastic dissipation under sliding contact 1–3. LFM is also used for obtaining edge enhanced imaging of any surfaces.
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