What information can I extract from AFM? Also please let me know how I can extract that info from an AFM image.
It is depends upon for what samples you are doing AFM scan. For thin films AFM instrument can give you information about grain size, surface roughness, grain shape ,pores etc. For nano particles you can measure particles size. You can also measure the thickness of single graphene monolayer. One free software is available online for raw data processing called as wsxm. It is very good and widely used by scientific community .
From AFM you may extract a wide range of informations: 3D topography, mechanical properties (Harness elastic modulus, storage and loss modulii), adhesion, chemical informations by functionalizing your probe tip, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, electrostatic forces, magnetic forces.... AFM has been applied to many different research fields :biology, chemistry, physics, Mechanic...
To find out more you may have a look to manufacturer's websites, you will find usefull starting informations.
Where you having a specific application in mind?
Together with topographical and tribological information for standard AFM (with standard tip), which, as was mentioned, will give you ideas and even quantized information about roughness, particle size, 3D structure, adhesive forces, if you have multifunctional AFM with magnetic or electrically conductive tips, you can scan magnetic forces and electrical potential scan of surfaces.
Moreover, if you have one of those recent AFM heads, you can make surface characterization also in liquid (Liquid stage AFM imaging)
From quite a time, almost every good AFM system has had an option to test samples in liquid. But it might be too complex in some of the systems. Mainly the use of liquid mode has had been the testing of biological samples in their native state. However, i think they can be pretty useful in other applications also.
List not exhaustive:
contact-mode
• topography
• friction, lateral forces
• piezo response mode
• elasticity
intermittent contact-mode (tapping)
• topography
• pulsed force (elasticity, adhesion mapping)
• force-distance curves (elasticity, adhesion mapping)
non contact-mode
• topography by van der Waal‘s forces
• topography by electrostatic forces
• topography by chemical interaction forces (true atomic resolution)
• energy loss (damping) microscopy
• MFM, EFM
• Kelvin probe
• Casimir forces
• force-distance, damping-distance curves (chemical interaction forces)
What at are you interesting in?
With what kind of AFM?
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