Acoustically excited probe microscopy

Acoustic pictures were returned from the darkened scenery. If there had been any system left to be invented they would have found it out at the universities long before this time. (The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy 1878) 

I understand that Dr Midwinter plans to convert the wine cellar into a laboratory, but I suspect he will find more meaning in the bottom of a glass of Nuits St Georges than beneath the lens of his wretched microscope. 

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Fig. 13.2. Addition of piezoelectric transducers to an atomic force microscope for acoustically excited probe microscopy. The forces acting between the tip and the sample are measured by the vertical and lateral deflections of the cantilever...

When the first edition was published in 1992, the resolution of the acoustic microscope techniques used at the time was controlled by the wavelength. In practice the frequency-dependent attenuation of the acoustic wave in the coupling fluid sets a lower limit to the wavelength, and therefore to the resolution, of about 1 pm for routine applications. Since then scanning probe techniques with nanometre scale resolution have been developed along the lines of the atomic force microscope. This has resulted in the development of the ultrasonic force microscopy techniques, in which the sample is excited by... 

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