Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Commons^™

Comparison Of Photothermal And Piezoacoustic Excitation Methods For Frequency And Phase Modulation Atomic Force Microscopy In Liquid Environments, A. Labuda, K. Kobayashi, Daniel Kiracofe, K. Suzuki, P. H. Gruetter, H. Yamada

Birck and NCN Publications

In attempting to perform frequency modulation atomic force microscopy (FM-AFM) in liquids, a non-flat phase transfer function in the self-excitation system prevents proper tracking of the cantilever natural frequency. This results in frequency-and-phase modulation atomic force microscopy (FPM-AFM) which lies in between phase modulation atomic force microscopy (PM-AFM) and FM-AFM. We derive the theory necessary to recover the conservative force and damping in such a situation, where standard FM-AFM theory no longer applies. Although our recovery procedure applies to all cantilever excitation methods in principle, its practical implementation may be difficult, or even impossible, if the cantilever is driven piezoacoustically. …