Massively parallel cantilever-free atomic force microscopy.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33452253.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-20612-3 and PMC identifier 7810748.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Resolution and field-of-view often represent a fundamental tradeoff in microscopy. Atomic force microscopy (AFM), in which a cantilevered probe deflects under the influence of local forces as it scans across a substrate, is a key example of this tradeoff with high resolution imaging being largely limited to small areas. Despite the tremendous impact of AFM in fields including materials science, biology, and surface science, the limitation in imaging area has remained a key barrier to studying samples with intricate hierarchical structure. Here, we show that massively parallel AFM with >1000 probes is possible through the combination of a cantilever-free probe architecture and a scalable optical method for detecting probe-sample contact. Specifically, optically reflective conical probes on a comparatively compliant film are found to comprise a distributed optical lever that translates probe motion into an optical signal that provides sub-10 nm vertical precision. The scalability of this approach makes it well suited for imaging applications that require high resolution over large areas.