Due to the harmonic motion of the cantilever in Tapping Mode Atomic Force Microscopy, it is seemingly impossible to estimate the tip-sample interactions from the motion of the cantilever. Not directly observing the interaction force, it is possible to damage the surface or the tip by applying an excessive mechanical load. The tip-sample interactions scale with the effective stiffness of the probe. Thus, the reduction of the mechanical load is usually limited by the manufacturability of low stiffness probes. However, the one-to-one relationship between spring constant and applied force only holds when higher modes of the cantilever are not excited. In this paper, it is shown that, by passively tuning higher modes of the cantilever, it is possible to reduce the peak repulsive force. These tuned probes can be dynamically more compliant than conventional probes with the same static spring constant. Both theoretical and experimental results show that a proper tuning of dynamic modes of cantilevers reduces the contact load and increases the sensitivity considerably. Moreover, due to the contribution of higher modes, the tuned cantilevers provide more information on the tip-sample interaction. This extra information from the higher harmonics can be used for mapping and possibly identification of material properties of samples.
Structural, optical and electronic properties and elastic constants of Be 1-x Zn x S alloys have been studied by employing the commercial code Castep based on density functional theory. The generalized gradient approximation and local density approximation were utilized as exchange correlation. Using elastic constants for compounds, bulk modulus, band gap, Fermi energy and Kramers-Kronig relations, dielectric constants and the refractive index have been found through calculations. Apart from these, X-ray measurements revealed elastic constants and Vegard's law. It is seen that results obtained from theory and experiments are all in agreement.
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