Laser force microscope

Detection of cantilever displacement is another important issue in force microscope design. The first AFM instrument used an STM to monitor the movement of the cantilever—an extremely sensitive method. STM detection suffers from the disadvantage, however, that tip or cantilever contamination can affect the instrument s sensitivity, and that the topography of the cantilever may be incorporated into the data. The most coimnon methods in use today are optical, and are based either on the deflection of a laser beam [80], which has been bounced off the rear of the cantilever onto a position-sensitive detector (figme B 1.19.18), or on an interferometric principle [81]. 

Sarid, D., lams, D., Weissenberger, V. and Bell, L.S., Compact scanning-force microscope using a laser diode. Opt. Lett., 13(12), 1057-1059 (1988). 

Binnig et al. [48] invented the atomic force microscope in 1985. Their original model of the AFM consisted of a diamond shard attached to a strip of gold foil. The diamond tip contacted the surface directly, with the inter-atomic van der Waals forces providing the interaction mechanism. Detection of the cantilever s vertical movement was done with a second tip—an STM placed above the cantilever. Today, most AFMs use a laser beam deflection system, introduced by Meyer and Amer [49], where a laser is reflected from the back of the reflective AFM lever and onto a position-sensitive detector. 

Sugiura, T., Okada, T., Inouye, Y Nakamura, O. and Kawata, S. (1997) Gold-bead scanning near-field optical microscope with laser-force position control. Opt. Lett., 22, 1663-1665. 

Figure 3.2 The essential elements of an atomic force microscope. The sample is moved beneath a tip mounted on a cantilever a laser beam reflected off the back of the tip and on to a photodiode amplifies deflections of the cantilever.

In this chapter, we will show how nonequilibrium methods can be used to calculate equilibrium free energies. This may appear contradictory at first glance. However, as was shown by Jarzynski [1, 2], nonequilibrium perturbations can be used to obtain equilibrium free energies in a formally exact way. Moreover, Jarzynski s identity also provides the basis for a quantitative analysis of experiments involving the mechanical manipulation of single molecules using, e.g., force microscopes or laser tweezers [3-6]. 

In atomic force microscopy (AFM), the sharp tip of a microscopic probe attached to a flexible cantilever is drawn across an uneven surface such as a membrane (Fig. 1). Electrostatic and van der Waals interactions between the tip and the sample produce a force that moves the probe up and down (in the z dimension) as it encounters hills and valleys in the sample. A laser beam reflected from the cantilever detects motions of as little as 1 A. In one type of atomic force microscope, the force on the probe is held constant (relative to a standard force, on the order of piconewtons) by a feedback circuit that causes the platform holding the sample to rise or fall to keep the force constant. A series of scans in the x and y dimensions (the plane of the membrane) yields a three-dimensional contour map of the surface with resolution near the atomic scale—0.1 nm in the vertical dimension, 0.5 to 1.0 nm in the lateral dimensions. The membrane rafts shown in Figure ll-20b were visualized by this technique. 

Atomic force microscopes have been built in many different versions, with at least six different ways of measuring the deflection of the cantilever [36, 37, 40-42], The commercially available AFM systems use the double photo detector system shown in Figure 7.17 and described by Meyer and Amer [44], Here, a lens focuses a laser beam on the end of the cantilever, which reflects the beam onto two photo detectors which measure intensities T and f2. When the cantilever bends towards the surface, detector 2 receives more light and the difference (h — h) becomes larger. If the tip is scanned over the sample by means of the x- and y-components of the piezo crystal, the difference signal (T — h)/(h + h)... 

Fig. 2 Schematic representation of the basic detection elements of the scanning force microscope and of the piezoelectric transducers generating the displacement modulations for purposes of dynamic mechanical measurements. The dynamic components of the tip-sample forces resulting from the normal/lateral displacement modulations are detected via the torsion/bending of the microscopic cantilever and the deflection of the laser beam reflected off the rear side of the cantilever. The positional shift of the latter is registered by means of a segmented photo-diode...

FIGURE 4.2. A schematic of an atomic force microscope, comprising a piezo mbe, a cantilever, a sample or substrate to image and an optical lever using a laser and four-quadrant photodiode. A colloidal probe (radius 5 pm) is added to the end of the cantilever for direct force measurement. For imaging application, the probe is absent and the tip is rastered across the surface. 

Figure 2.17. Sketch of a friction force microscope (FFM) with a beam-deflection detection scheme. Cantilever movements are monitored by a laser beam with a four-quadrant photodiode. The topography (T) is measured simultaneously with the lateral forces (L). Irreversible lateral forces are by definition frictional forces. (From Ovemey, 1995.)...

The sample (mounted on a metallic sample puck) is attached to the scanner, which will later position the sample in all three spatial directions. The optical head comprises the cantilever-tip assembly in a special holder, as well as the optics (laser and photodetector) of the beam-deflection detection scheme. The base contains electronic circuitry and is the interface between controller and actual force microscope. It also serves as physical holder for the scanner and may include a stepper motor, which is used for the coarse and fine approach between tip and sample (see below). 

It was first reported that the topochemical photopolymerization of diolefin crystals gave rise to cracks and deformation [7]. An atomic force microscopic (AFM) study made possible the observation that the photodimerizations of trans-cinnamic acids and anthracenes in the crystalline state induced surface morphological changes at the tens and hundreds of nanometers level by the transportation and rebuilding of the surface molecules [8]. The appearance of a surface relief grating on the single crystal of 4-(dimethylamino)azobenzene was demonstrated by repeated irradiation with two coherent laser beams [9]. 

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