Compositional imaging of complex materials with atomic force microscopy
Dr. Sergei Magonov
The webinar took place on 26 April, 2016
Webinar Synopsis:
Recognition of individual constituents of complex materials with Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) at small scales is one of important functions of this characterization technique. Visualization of specific structures and their dimensions is only first step in compositional mapping with AFM. The value of compositional imaging is substantially enhanced with development of AFM-related techniques for qualitative and quantitative measurements of local mechanical, electric and dielectric properties. Furthermore, the emerging efforts in combining of AFM with spectroscopic techniques (Raman and IR) are adding the invaluable chemical identification of species of multi-component materials.
All mentioned techniques are implemented in NT-MDT microscopes, which have a most broad range of core AFM modes (contact mode, non-resonant oscillatory Hybrid mode, amplitude modulation modes with phase and frequency imaging and frequency modulation mode). The related capabilities of AFM compositional imaging will be demonstrated on variety of materials (metals, semi-conductors, organic compounds, polymers, etc). Main discussion points will include sensitivity and selectivity of compositional mapping as well as spatial resolution and complementary nature of different techniques. Particularly, we will provide examples of quantitative mapping of elastic modulus and surface potential with nanometer scale resolution and will discuss the applicability of spectroscopic measurements.