Chemical force microscopy of microcontact-printed self-assembled monolayers by pulsed-force-mode atomic force microscopy

Force measurements with the atomic force microscope: Technique, interpretation and applications

“…The usefulness of PFM for chemical force microscopy was shown using COOH and CH 3 terminated AFM tips to image the chemical composition of patterned COOH and CH 3 terminated SAMs [1240][1241][1242]. Akimoto et al [358] demonstrated that from the adhesive force between a gold-coated tip and a Au(1 1 1) substrate covered with CH 3 terminated alkanethiols, one could discriminate between areas with different chain lengths of the alkanethiol.…”

Chemical force microscopy: probing chemical origin of interfacial forces and adhesion

“…Another possibility is to increase the throughput of the CFM measurements drastically. Pulsed force mode (PFM) measurements [102] allow researchers to collect adhesion force data at the rates approaching 1kHz, which is almost close to the natural limit for the adhesion measurement speed (as set by the AFM piezo resonance frequency). PFM measurements thus can provide high-throughput screening capability; however, they still must rely on robust cantilever functionalization.…”

Chemical force microscopy of chemical and biological interactions

“…The most straightforward application of CFM to mapping of the surface functionalities would be to use a functionalized AFM tip to construct a 2-D map of adhesion forces. Some of these measurements relied Pulsed Force Mode imaging approach [68] that allowed high-speed collection of tip-sample adhesion values at a rate about 1 kHz (see [69]); however, the extremely high probe travel speeds inherent for these experiments probably pushed the interaction very far into the kinetic regime. Accurate interpretation of the pulsed force mode images should require effective control over the loading rate, which in that case involves significant technical difficulties.…”