Advances in dynamic AFM: from nanoscale energy dissipation to material properties in the nanoscale

TL;DR

This paper reviews over a decade of advances in dynamic atomic force microscopy, focusing on energy dissipation, phase contrast, and extracting material properties at the nanoscale using various force measurement techniques.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the development of methods for quantifying forces and material properties in dynamic AFM, including recent multifrequency approaches.

Findings

Enhanced understanding of energy dissipation mechanisms

Improved techniques for material property extraction

Advances in multifrequency AFM methods

Abstract

Since the inception of the atomic force microscope AFM, dynamic methods have been very fruitful by establishing methods to quantify dissipative and conservative forces in the nanoscale and by providing a means to apply gentle forces to the samples with high resolution. Here we review developments that cover over a decade of our work on energy dissipation, phase contrast and the extraction of relevant material properties from observables. We describe the attempts to recover material properties via one dimensional amplitude and phase curves from force models and explore the evolution of these methods in terms of force reconstruction, fits of experimental measurements, and the more recent advances in multifrequency AFM.