Heterodyne force microscopy

If vibration is applied both through the cantilever tip (at frequency heterodyne detection. The AFM tip detects the oscillating force at the difference frequency cot — cos, very much like a heterodyne radio receiver. This technique is known as heterodyne force microscopy (HFM Cuberes et al. 2000). Once again, the tip-surface force non-linearity plays a critical role. The low-frequency beating oscillation carries information on the phase of the original high-frequency oscillations. 

Fig. 13.20. Optical heterodyne force microscopy (OHFM) and its application to a copper strip of width 500 nm, thickness 350 nm, on a silicon substrate, with subsequent chemical vapour deposition (CVD) of a silicon oxide layer followed by polishing and evaporation of a chromium layer of uniform thickness 100 nm and flatness better than 10 nm (a) amplitude (b) phase 2.5 [im x 2.5 m. Ultrasonic vibration at fi = 4.190 MHz was applied to the cantilever light of wavelength 830 nm was chopped at fo = 4.193 MHz and focused through the tip to a spot of diameter 2 im with incident mean power 0.5 mW the cantilever resonant frequency was 38 kHz. The non-linear tip-sample interaction generates vibrations of the cantilever at the difference frequency f2 — f = 3 kHz (Tomoda et al. 2003).

Cuberes, M. T Assender, H. E Briggs, G. A. D., and Kolosov, O. V. (2000). Heterodyne force microscopy of PMMA/rubber nanocomposites nanomapping of viscoelastic response at ultrasonic frequencies. J. Phys. D Appl. Phys 33, 2347-55. [315]... 

Kumano, N., Inagaki, K Kolosov, O. V., and Wright, O. B. (1998). Optical heterodyne force microscopy. IEEE 1998 Ultrasonics Symposium, pp. 1269-72. IEEE, New York. [319]... 

There was, however, one topic which was not included in the first edition, which has undergone substantial development in the intervening years. It could have been foreseen in 1986 a paper was presented at the IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium entitled Ultrasonic pin scanning microscope a new approach to ultrasonic microscopy (Zieniuk and Latuszek 1986,1987). With the advent of atomic force microscopy, it proved possible to combine the nanometre-scale spatial resolution of scanning probe microscopy with the sensitivity to mechanical properties of acoustic microscopy. The technique became known as ultrasonic force microscopy, and has been joined by cognate techniques such as atomic force acoustic microscopy, scanning local-acceleration microscopy, and heterodyne force microscopy. 

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