Quantitative Nanofriction Characterization of Corrugated Surfaces by Atomic Force Microscopy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to accurately measure nanofriction on corrugated surfaces using AFM by correcting for surface tilt effects, enabling reliable quantitative analysis of complex nanostructured materials.

Contribution

It presents a general topographic correction approach for AFM lateral force maps, specifically addressing multi-asperity adhesive contact in corrugated samples.

Findings

Effective correction of topographic artifacts in lateral force maps.

Protocol for quantitative nanofriction characterization of corrugated surfaces.

Enhanced reliability in nanotribology measurements on complex surfaces.

Abstract

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is a suitable tool to perform tribological characterization of materials down to the nanometer scale. An important aspect in nanofriction measurements of corrugated samples is the local tilt of the surface, which affects the lateral force maps acquired with the AFM. This is one of the most important problems of state-of-the-art nanotribology, making difficult a reliable and quantitative characterization of real corrugated surfaces. A correction of topographic spurious contributions to lateral force maps is thus needed for corrugated samples. In this paper we present a general approach to the topographic correction of AFM lateral force maps and we apply it in the case of multi-asperity adhesive contact. We describe a complete protocol for the quantitative characterization of the frictional properties of corrugated systems in the presence of surface adhesion using the AFM.