Reconstruction of Tip-Surface Interactions with Multimodal Intermodulation Atomic Force Microscopy

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework for reconstructing complex tip-surface interactions in atomic force microscopy using multimodal intermodulation techniques, enabling accurate force field reconstruction in bimodal scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical approach for multimodal intermodulation AFM, addressing multiple eigenmodes for improved interaction reconstruction.

Findings

Accurate reconstruction of 2D conservative force fields in bimodal AFM.

Demonstrated dissipation analysis in bimodal AFM.

Numerical validation of the proposed framework.

Abstract

We propose a theoretical framework for reconstructing tip-surface interactions using the intermodulation technique when more than one eigenmode is required to describe the cantilever motion. Two particular cases of bimodal motion are studied numerically: one bending and one torsional mode, and two bending modes. We demonstrate the possibility of accurate reconstruction of a two-dimensional conservative force field for the former case, while dissipative forces are studied for the latter.