Reduction by ion-milling of surface corrugation of thin amorphous carbon films for biological specimen substrates in scanning tunneling microscopy

Electron holography of thin amorphous carbon films: Measurement of the mean inner potential and a thickness-independent phase shift

“…It is well known that thin a-C films exhibit a significant extent of surface corrugation. Concerning a 10 nm a-C film Hillebrand et al [17] found a peak-to-valley corrugation of about 1.5 nm within an area of 200 nm 2 in STM measurements. Since the sample area contained in a hologram is limited for technical reasons to about 30 Â 30 nm 2 an additional variation of the data due to local thickness variations contributes to the spread of the data.…”

Friction and Wear of Mineral Surfaces in Liquid Environments

“…LFM imaging in water is also useful to obtain information of slight structural modifications of mineral surfaces like calcite (104) and dolomite (104) faces. In first high resolution AFM studies of calcite (104) surfaces conducted in water, a rectangular lattice consistent with the calcite bulk structure was reported [1,2,[14][15][16]. In addition, AFM images showed two peculiarities in the termination of the calcite (104) face: (i) the existence of rows of atoms parallel to the [010] direction which alternate in height and they are paired, i.e.…”

“…Minerals have been revealed as an almost inexhaustible source of surfaces which can be studied with atomic force microscopy (AFM). As early as 1992, the (104) surface of the mineral calcite was chosen by several researchers to conduct first investigations of a relatively complex crystal face using AFM [1][2][3]. Since then, mineral surfaces have been extensively used to investigate the structure, reactivity (e.g.…”