Accurate Spring Constant Calibration for very Stiff Atomic Force Microscopy Cantilevers

Published

November 26, 2013

Author(s)

Scott Grutzik, Richard S. Gates, Yvonne B. Gerbig, Douglas T. Smith, Robert F. Cook, Alan Zehnder

Abstract

There are many atomic force microscopy (AFM) applications that rely on quantifying the force between the AFM cantilever tip and the sample. The AFM does not explicitly measure force, however, so in such cases knowledge of the cantilever stiffness is required. In most cases, the forces of interest are very small, thus compliant cantilevers are used. A number of methods have been developed that are well suited to measuring low stiffness values. However, in some cases a cantilever with much greater stiffness is required. Thus, a direct, traceable method for calibrating very stiff (approximately 200 N/m) cantilevers is presented here. The method uses an instrumented and calibrated nanoindenter to determine the stiffness of a reference cantilever. This reference cantilever is then used to measure the stiffness of a number of AFM test cantilevers. This method is shown to have much smaller uncertainty than previously proposed methods. An example application to fracture testing of nanoscale silicon beam specimens is included.

Citation

Review of Scientific Instruments

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

AFM, calibration, cantilever, fracture, stiffness

Citation

Grutzik, S. , Gates, R. , Gerbig, Y. , Smith, D. , Cook, R. and Zehnder, A. (2013), Accurate Spring Constant Calibration for very Stiff Atomic Force Microscopy Cantilevers, Review of Scientific Instruments, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=912481 (Accessed December 14, 2024)