0000000000368458
AUTHOR
J. Lievonen
Environmental chamber for an atomic force microscope.
A commercial atomic force microscope (AFM), originally designed for operation in ambient conditions, was placed inside a compact aluminum chamber, which can be pumped down to high vacuum levels or filled with a desired gaseous atmosphere, including humidity, up to normal pressure. The design of this environmental AFM is such that minimal intrusion is made to the original setup, which can be restored easily. The performance inside the environmental chamber is similar to the original version.
Lateral force microscopy of multiwalled carbon nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes are usually imaged with the atomic force microscope (AFM) in non-contact mode. However, in many applications, such as mechanical manipulation or elasticity measurements, contact mode is used. The forces affecting the nanotube are then considerable and not fully understood. In this work lateral forces were measured during contact mode imaging with an AFM across a carbon nanotube. We found that, qualitatively, both magnitude and sign of the lateral forces to the AFM tip were independent of scan direction and can be concluded to arise from the tip slipping on the round edges of the nanotube. The dependence on the normal force applied to the tip and on the ratio between nanotub…