Scanning local-acceleration microscopy

Oulevey, F, Burnham, N.A., Kulik, A.J., Gallo, P.-J., Gremaud, G. and Benoit, W., Mechanical properties studied at the nanoscale using scanning local-acceleration microscopy (SLAM). J. Phys. IV, 6, 731-734 (1996). 

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. 

To minimise the friction effect, it has been proposed to use smaller amplitudes and higher frequencies [122,137]. The so-called scanning local-acceleration microscopy (SLAM) is another modification of contact-mode SFM which was implemented by vibrating the sample at a frequency above the highest tip-sample resonance (region III in Fig. 13b). In this frequency range (around 1 MHz), the cantilever response to the sample excitations becomes independent of the cantilever stiffness and depends linearly on the contact stiffness and reciprocally on the cantilever mass m (Fig. 13b) ... 

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