We address in this paper the issue of quantitative charge imaging of individually charged semiconductor nanoparticles on conductive substrates by electric force microscopy ͑EFM͒. An analytical model is proposed for arbitrary tip and nanoparticle geometries to determine the amount of stored charges from the ratio R between the nanoparticle charge and capacitive force gradients. The quantitative character of the model is validated by extensive numerical calculations of EFM signals using various nanoparticle shapes, sizes, and aspect ratios, and different EFM tip geometries.

We provide in this article a comprehensive study of the role of ac cross-talk effects in Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (KPFM), and their consequences onto KPFM imaging. The dependence of KPFM signals upon internal parameters such as the cantilever excitation frequency and the projection angle of the KPFM feedback loop is reviewed, and compared with an analytical model. We show that ac cross-talks affect the measured KPFM signals as a function of the tip-substrate distance, and thus hamper the measurement of three-dimensional KPFM signals. The influence of ac cross-talks is also demonstrated onto KPFM images, in the form of topography footprints onto KPFM images, especially in the constant distance (lift) imaging mode. Our analysis is applied to unambiguously probe charging effects in tobacco mosaic viruses (TMVs) in ambient air. TMVs are demonstrated to be electrically neutral when deposited on silicon dioxide surfaces, but inhomogeneously negatively charged when deposited on a gold surface. V

The measurement of local surface potentials by Kelvin force microscopy (KFM) can be sensitive to external perturbations which lead to artifacts such as strong dependences of experimental results (typically in a ∼1 V range) with KFM internal parameters (cantilever excitation frequency and/or the projection phase of the KFM feedback-loop). We analyze and demonstrate a correction of such effects on a KFM implementation in ambient air. Artifact-free KFM measurements, i.e., truly quantitative surface potential measurements, are obtained with a ∼30 mV accuracy.

We address the issue of dipole-dipole interaction measurements at the nanometer scale. Electric dipoles with tunable effective momentum in the range 10(3)-10(4) D are generated by charge injection in single silicon nanoparticles on a conductive substrate and probed by a spectroscopic electric force microscopy analysis. Weak dipole-dipole force gradients are measured and identified from their quadratic momentum dependence. The results suggest that dipolar interactions associated with atomic-scale charge displacements or molecules can be probed by noncontact atomic force microscopy.