Matei, G.
, Thoreson, E.
, Pratt, J.
, Newell, D.
and Burnham, N.
(2006),
Precision and Accuracy of Thermal Calibration of Atomic Force Microscopy Cantilevers, Review of Scientific Instruments (Accessed April 26, 2026)
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Precision and Accuracy of Thermal Calibration of Atomic Force Microscopy Cantilevers
Published
Author(s)
G A. Matei, E J. Thoreson, , , N A. Burnham
Abstract
To have confidence in force measurements made with atomic force microscopes (AFMs), the spring constant of the AFM cantilevers should be known with good precision and accuracy, topics not yet thoroughly treated in the literature. In this study, we compared the stiffnesses of uncoated tipless uniform retangular silicon cantilevers among thermal, loading, and geometric calibration methods; loading was done against an SI-traceable artifact from NIST. The precision and accuracy of the thermal method were found to be 5 and 10% respectively. Force measurements taken with different cantilevers can now be meaningfully compared.Citation
Review of Scientific Instruments
Volume
77
Pub Type
Journals
Keywords
atomic force microscopes, cantilever springs, standard reference measurement and practices
Citation
Issues
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Created December 31, 2005, Updated October 12, 2021