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MSE 406 Lab 6 AFM

The document summarizes an atomic force microscope (AFM) demonstration. It describes the basic working principles of an AFM, including how it uses a cantilever with a sharp tip to map a sample surface with high vertical resolution. The demonstration procedure is outlined, from mounting the cantilever to obtaining 2D and 3D images of a surface. Key aspects covered are sample preparation, aligning the laser beam, setting scanning parameters, and optimizing the quality of scanned images.

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Hieu Nguyen Tri
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82 views4 pages

MSE 406 Lab 6 AFM

The document summarizes an atomic force microscope (AFM) demonstration. It describes the basic working principles of an AFM, including how it uses a cantilever with a sharp tip to map a sample surface with high vertical resolution. The demonstration procedure is outlined, from mounting the cantilever to obtaining 2D and 3D images of a surface. Key aspects covered are sample preparation, aligning the laser beam, setting scanning parameters, and optimizing the quality of scanned images.

Uploaded by

Hieu Nguyen Tri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lab Report on Atmoic Force Microscope (AFM)

Demonstration
Hieu Nguyen
trihieu.231@gmail.com
May 12, 2016

Introduction

The Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) was invented in 1985 by Calvin Quate, Christoph Gerber,
and Gerd Binning [1], [2]. It is an imaging instrument that is mainly used to maps the surface of
a flat specimen, using a sharp stylus attached at the end of a cantilever that scan over the sample.
AFM does not have a good lateral resolution, but can achieve a very high vertical resolution; a
15 picometers resolution has been reported [3].
The cantilever beam of the AFM is about an order of 10 or 100 micrometers long (Figure 2)
[1], [4]. One end of the cantilever is attached to the AFM scanner, while the other end holds a
stylus pointing toward the specimens surface. The cantilever moves along with the scanner while
scanning; it can also bend or oscillates vertically. When the tip of the stylus closely approaches a
samples surface, the cantilever bends due to either physical contact between the stylus and the
samples surface in contact mode or the atomic force between the tip of the stylus and the surface
in tapping mode. The tip of the stylus is made very sharp; its sharpness affects the resolution of
the microscope.
The cantilevers motion is measured in order to obtain information about the samples surface.
One method is to use sensing elements that are built into the cantilever, including piezoresistors,
piezoelectric elements, and capacitive elements; these elements directly sense the deformation
and the stress of the cantilever [1]. Another method is shining a laser beam on the back of the
cantilever and detecting the reflections by a detector. The angle of the reflecting beam changes
as the cantilever bend; thus, the detector can sense the motion of the cantilever, whether it is
vertical or lateral motion.
Two primary modes in which the cantilever can be used to scan over a surface are the contact
mode and the tapping mode. In contact mode, the tip of the stylus touches the samples surface
such that it always lightly push against the sample. The force acted on the sample is caused by
the deformation of the cantilever and can be simply modeled using Hooks law, in which z is
the vertical displacement of the cantilever, k is the spring constant of the cantilever:
F = k|z|

(1)

The microscope automatically adjust the vertical position such that the force exerted on the
sample stays constant by a feedback loop. The cantilevers vertical position is recorded each
time the stylus change position in order to generate a pixel of the image [1]. In the tapping
mode, the cantilever oscillates above the sample without making any physical contact with the
sample. The feedback loop tries to maintain a constant amplitude or the cantilevers natural

AFM Lab Demo

May 12, 2016

Page 2

frequency. This mode is ideal for measuring specimens that are too fragile for the contact mode,
especially biological sample. A formula to calculate the natural frequency of a cantilever with a
spring constant of k and a mass of m is given below:
r
1
k
fn =
(2)
2 m

XRD Lab Demo Activity and Operation Procedure

At the beginning, we mount the cantilever (Figure 3a) onto the


scanner (Figure 3b) of the AFM with a help of a magnifying lens
and tweezers. We inserted the scanner into the AFM. A live monitor showed that the scanner was inserted into the microscope.
The AFM is supported by four spring cables and contained in a
foam chamber in order to minimize noise (Figure 1).
Next, we aligned the laser beam such that the reflection beam
pointed to the center of the detector. Two knobs under the AFM
were used to adjust the position of the reflection beam spot.
A substrate was inserted into the sample holder under the
scanner. The grey area of the substrate indicated the flat surface, while the yellow area indicated the coated area needed to be
Figure 1: The AFM used in
scanned.
After inserting the substrate, we closed the chambers door. the demonstration.
We set the machine in contact mode. The machine automatically
approached the sample; a dialog in a monitor indicated how far was the sample from the stylus.
Parameters such as the scan area, the scan speed, and the signal amplification can be set up in
another dialog on the monitor. When the machine approached the sample, the monitor notice us
that the sample was ready to be scanned. During the demonstration, the computer froze while
the machine was approaching the sample; we had to restart the computer and the procedure.
A yellow curve and a red curve representing the samples topology were shown on the monitor
during the scanning process; they represented the forward and backward scanning profile. If they
closely match, the image has a good quality.
The result of scanning is a two-dimensional (2D) image of the surface (Figure 4). After
scanning, we were given an option to do image post processing, which allow us to tilt the image,
convert the 2D image to a 3D image (Figure 5), change the color profile of the image, and export
the image. It was advised that we should minimize image post processing to keep the image
realistic.
It was mentioned that particles sizes can be measured by the AFM image; however, we
should measure vertically since AFM yield a less accurate measurement laterally than vertically.
The measured specimens roughness should be less than 1 m; otherwise, the cantilever may be
broken.

Conclusion

We have briefly introduce the procedure of operating the AFM machine. The working principle
of the AFM is also mentioned.

AFM Lab Demo

May 12, 2016

Page 3

References
[1]

B. Rogers, J. Adams, and S. Pennathur, Nanotechnology: Understanding Small Systems,


3rd ed., ser. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Series. CRC Press, 2014, pp. 175187,
isbn: 9781482211726.

[2]

G. Binnig, C. F. Quate, and C. Gerber, Atomic force microscope, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol.
56, pp. 930933, 9 Mar. 1986. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.56.930. [Online]. Available:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.56.930.

[3]

Afm achieves picometer accuracy, English, R & D, vol. 53, no. 5, p. 40, Sep. 2011, AFM
achieves picometer accuracy. [Online]. Available: http://www.rdmag.com/award-winners/
2011/08/afm-achieves-picometer-accuracy.

[4]

W. P. King, T. W. Kenny, K. E. Goodson, G. L. W. Cross, M. Despont, U. T. Durig, H.


Rothuizen, G. Binnig, and P. Vettiger, Design of atomic force microscope cantilevers for
combined thermomechanical writing and thermal reading in array operation, Journal of
Microelectromechanical Systems, vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 765774, Dec. 2002, issn: 1057-7157.
doi: 10.1109/JMEMS.2002.803283.

Appendixes

Figure 2: An image of a cantilever [4].

(a) An arrays of cantilevers in (b) The scanner of the


the lab
AFM

Figure 3: Pictures of the scanner and the cantilevers used in the demonstration

AFM Lab Demo

May 12, 2016

Page 4

Figure 4: A two dimensional image of the scanning result, after tilting. The darker the pixels,
the deeper they are.

Figure 5: A three dimensional image obtained from post-processing the two-dimensional image.
Colors are added to highlight the topography of the samples surface.

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