Adhesion in the Scanning Probe Microscope

It would be a superb experiment if two molecules could be gripped, brought together, and then pulled apart to measure their molecular adhesion. Unfortunately no-one has yet found a way to do this (see Chapter 13). And the very act of gripping the molecules would change their character by preventing Brownian motion, and also distorting their electronic attractive fields of influence. 

A much more practical experiment became possible with the invention of the atomic force microscope by Binnig, Quate and Gerber in 1986. This device 

This was the first time that the strange diamond patterned arrangement of adatoms on the surface of a silicon wafer had been seen directly, although it had been suspected from previous spectroscopic measurements of silicon surfaces. For this remarkable instrument, now called the scanning tunneling microscope, Binnig and Rohrer received the Nobel Prize in 1986. 

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