What is the best AFM available in the market for both high resolution imaging and force measurements?

Thanks Fernanda and Tamas for the informative answers. It's a good idea to take a demo. I generally go for a demo before investing so much money on an equipment.

But I value the answers from you guys much more than the demo.

Regarding Tamas's comment on advertising:

let us see if there are some suppliers around to promote their equipments. I guess, they are not around!

Jordi Diaz

Hi,

I agree that the best choice is to take a demo with your particular samples. Nowadays, I use a mmode8 with nsV and peak force is a very powefool tool. On the other hand, I use a MFP-3D from asylum and the system has a level noise of about 30pN and the new version, cypher is even better. For biological samples, the new system of JPK is extremely competitive...

Sergio Santos

Hello, another thing is the systems you want to image and in which environment. The highest resolution is FM AFM in ultra high vacuum with a single atom tip, do you want to see single atoms? single nanostructures? periodic but hard systems or soft systems? The range of the piezo you buy also needs to take into account the systems you want to look at.

You could look at the papers you read on the topic and see what they have done and compare with what you want to do.

Hope this helps

Peter De Wolf

Tamas makes a good point; Best is to go and see the instruments in action. Try to get some of your own samples measured, and also operate the instrument yourself.

There are many different models and options to choose from - several supporting high resolution & precise force measurements. The best fit will depend on the fine details of your current & future applications (as well as those from potential other users for the instrument).

Feel free to contact me off-list if you want us to run some of your samples, or organize a demonstration in our Bangalore lab or other location.

The scientific literature can also be used as an indicator for the performance of the various instruments in your research field.

Qijin Chi

It is hard to say which one is the best. Instead, you could find one most suitable for your research, depending on the systems and environments you focus. Both Agilent and Veco offer good instruments for imaging and force spectrocsopy.

Pavel Frantsuzov

Hello, John!

I completely agree with previous answers with regard to taking your objectives into account and taking a demo if possible. That are the main factors of your choice. But I want to put your mind to relatively new procedures of force measurements, such as Bruker's PeakForce or NT-MDT Hybrid Mode, that provide posibility of fast and precise measuring of surfase physical properties (Young modulus, rigidity etc) simultaneously with topografy.

Andreas Bergner

Hi John,

first I need to say that I worked with different AFM´s over the last 10 years as a reasearcher but that I was also responsible selling them (Molecular Imaging, JPK, Pacific Nanotechnolgy, Nanoink). On one hand my answer is therefor a little bit biased but as I am no longer in the AFM sales business maybe also trustful :-)

I totally agree toTamas answer. Compare the systems under the same conditions. Same cantilevers, same sample, same buffer/environment. Be present at the demo. Only buy what you really saw and not what you saw in an advertisement or what a sales guy might told you ;-). I also agree to his comments regarding the different AFM models and limitations.

Alll major suppliers offer a good quality. However, you also should think about after sales service. Ask the supplier about local technical staff, response time, after warranty support and which I found very important application support.

I know from my personal experience that JPK and to some extend Molecular imaging (now Agilent) did a very good job in the past with this. I also heard that Asylum Research is very good. I do not have any technical experience with Bruker (former Veeco).

I found JPK very easy to use and with a very, very good image quality. To me they have the best integration of AFM with optical microscopy. I would say that this AFM is very good for any bio-orientated research.

Molecular Imaging now Agilent were a little bit complicate to use with respect to sample handling and software control. Although the image quality was good and they have a lot of experience with electrochemical AFM applications as well as with some bio applications. My opinion is that their AFM systems are more attractive for physicist rather than biologists.I also think that the AFM design is a little bit outdated and that they would not be my first choice.

Overall my advise would be to compare and buy the system that offers you the best results and service package. Of course the price will play an important role but it should not play the major role within your decision process. Ideally the system should fit to your research and secondly to your budget and not vice versa.

Best regards,

Andreas

Sheng Song

Dear John,

As mentioned above, it will be too hard to say which is the best, rather to say which is most fit for your research purpose. For higher resolution imaging, you even don't have to buy a new entire AFM, using a inverted sharp tip or even carbon nanotube tip could do that job too, assuming your current AFM is not that old to adapt to the new tips.

But if you have a decent budget for a new one, I will suggest you call the manufacturer for a demo. Our institute just did that from bruker and asylum, and they are happy to do that. Another factor to consider is what information you really want from the image. If you just want topography, I think they all can do a good job now. But I found right now there is tendency each company has their specialty in AFM. Cypher has closed loop feedback and controllable chamber; Bruker has peakforce and TUNA; ndmdt has AFM-RAMAN-NSOM. etc

These featureS provide wider availability for one to think how to tail our research to maximize the potential of AFM. Right now I think most attractive one is AFM-RAMAN-NSOM, for biophysical study on surfaces. Because it can reveal its chemistry information as well as physical properties from traditional topo, phase and stiffness information.

Hope this can narrow down your choices.

Krishnashish Bose

I have used Multimode 3, Multimode 5, Multimode 8, Dimension, Dimension Icon, Bioscope Catalyst and seen a demo of Dimension FastScan. Apart from these Bruker instruments, I have also used JPK Nanowizard III, which I have found to be the worst of all AFMs I have ever used.

I am going to buy an AFM next year. I have contacted many companies and Asylum's Cypher ES was my first choice. I have received the quotation of many AFMs, of which Cypher ES and FastScan Bio cost almost the same (about 500k USD) which is the highest in the AFM market. UHV Cryo AFMs are the lowest noise SPMs in the world, however they cost more than a million. But those cannot be used for imaging in liquid, which is recommended for most biological samples.

Finally, I have decided to buy Cervantes from Nanotec Electronica and we shall be placing the order soon. It is only about 150k USD and has same noise as Cypher. It is however not as user friendly as Bruker's or Asylum's AFMs. Also, the laser spot size is slightly bigger (about 15 um) compared to 10 um available in Cypher or FastScan series. But the best thing about this Cervantes AFM is that you get much more features (for free) than any other AFM in the world and it is highly customizable.

Krishnashish Bose

Another good thing about Cervantes is that it is the only small-sample AFM system in the world, that can be customized so as to hold large samples like petri dishes, without compromising the stability of the AFM. One bad thing is that, the small scanners (3 um and 17 um) operate in open loop only and so the drifting could be very high. However, they also provide large scanners (100 um) which work well in closed loop. Cypher's 30 um scanners are the best in the market for closed loop imaging at low scan sizes.

Janusz Strzelecki

Agilent recently improved its force spectroscopy software features a lot. They also provide a PicoTrec force recognition mapping option. It is also an overall very versatile system with great customization capabilities.

JPK and Asylum are also a very good choice for the application you mention.

Memed Duman

I am also same situation with you. We are going to buy 2 AFM, one of them for normal material surface, other one should bioAFM. I am mainly interested in second one. I used to work on agilent 5500 and 6000. Agilent 6000 is a very good bioafm which can sit on any mics. I also went to Berlin and visited JPK for demo. JPK also got very good pics. In conclusion, both Agilent and JPK do very good job for biological sample. You can choose one of them.

I know there are a few companies in the competitive field of AFM marketing; on the other hand each instrument can fail, no matter how good the overall rating is. I remember some labs where experiments were prepared, but the commercial AFM did not work for no obvious reason - it is simply a black box then. Sometimes the old, custom-made special AFM is robust enough to do for example force measurements (in z-axis). Such AFM appear to be able to be built by very low cost, except a few diploma physics students... I remember a russion professor saying, 99% of AFM measurements is an artefact... I had to really develop my initial strategy over 1-2 months during the proff-of-concept experiments to pionier the first measurements of physiologically activated homing integrins (especially VLA-4) by chemokines (SDF-1) on the single-molecule level and, at the same time, on a living cell. It then needed another two years to adapt the experimental procedure to much easier design.

I do not think you want to work on living cells, but despite the question of money for a commercial AFM, you may ask the different leading companies, if they could just run one of your samples - and then compare the quality and possibilities for YOUR EXPERIMENTAL needs - you may find out that the experiments (and analysis) can not be done as expected. Sometimes it is good to use a standardized, commercially available AFM, but many labs can design their own (very cheap, and in some ways competitive AFM).

Dear Dr. John

I would agree with the first option of Asylum, and specifically the cipher. Cipher has a very small scanner which is hermetically sealed. This makes it ideal for very high resolution AFM images. However I believe that Asylum, being an American company will have trouble supplying to IGCAR. That means the next best option is also out viz. Bruker (Veeco).

After that the system capabilities blur out. If you are looking for a very high resolution AFM, then I can suggest HS-AFM. This is a company from Japan and makes very high speed and high resolution AFM.

Then you have the choice of JPK as a very easy to use AFM. The system is ideal for biological use and for force spectroscopy. Also it is very easy to integrate with a inverted microscope setup. In case of these two applications I would rate it as good as Asylum & Veeco.

In the Indian context however what would be ideal is to find an AFM that has a good technical support network, especially in terms of applications.

Best Hitesh

Thanks to all for the informative answers. In every answer, I see a new insight!

Thanks to research Gate!!

The funny thing is that no supplier wants to spend time to arrange a demonstration their system here ! They have one problem or another. Some wants me to send my samples to them to get the measurements done in their R&D centre, which I think is not the best way.

Thanks Hitesh for the answer from India perspective.!

Janusz Strzelecki

When we were buying AFM we were either invited for a demo in the company facilities at their cost or a demo was arranged with some customer who recently bought the instrument. In most cases it is also possible to arrange a demo session on some conference.

Andrzej Sikora

Dear John,

Let me add, that the force detection method may be critical in terms of the high resolution imaging of soft samples. You may be interested in considering the PeakForce method from Bruker (Icon, Catalyst, Edge, Multimode8), which allows to control the force applied to the surface while imaging, and provides selective detection of the tip-sample interaction in terms of the feedback loop driving for the tip-sample distance control. As the result, you apply significantly smaller force to the surface, avoiding its deformation.

In terms of performing specific experiments, you may consider the system allowing to write your own measurement scripts, procedures or even program the whole control module. Such features you can expect from Agillent, Asylum Research, NT-MDT or Bruker. But you need to test how flexible it is in terms of your expectations. I agree with Robert Eibl, that you can develop your own system or order it by yourself. But the question is if you have enough time, and how complex the system should be to meet your expectations?

The demo option is very nice, but to learn the instrument, to discover all disadvantages and nice features, you may need few months. It is better to discuss your specific needs with some experienced user active in that same research topic.

After all, the price will be the factor that may reduce your options to something you barely accept as the tool you will work with... or hopefully not.

Good luck!

Andrzej Sikora

...and one more thing, as the scanning speed wasn't discussed here. In biology it may play an essential role. Here you may take a look at the offer from Asylum (Cypher), Bruker (Fastscan) and AIST-NT (SmartSPM).

I think the regional support or the speed by which a replacement, repair, or consumption part can be exchanged should be considered. I think selling an AFM is quite challenging due to the different needs of the customers - and I expect AFMs to sell not that frequently as for example cars. I am not affiliated with any of the companies in the AFM market, but someone here mentioned before Asylum to be an american company. If I remember correctly they were bought by a britisch company (Oxford Instruments) about a year ago - so I expect this could even increase the availability of both products and regional support for parts - but this is just my speculation - all the other companies may also have very good AFMs and service. As I have seen leading laboratories usually designing their own AFMs to their needs, it may be an option to find such labs in your area to discuss the experimental challenges you may not be aware when comining force measurements AND topography. Unfortunately to me, I once was in a leading lab, but they at that time only developed AFMs without measuring in liquids and I was interested in live cell measurements.

It may be very difficult to really measure, for example, a living and migrating cell with different receptors at different locations in front and rear. My dream of experiment would include several differing cells and their timely interactions on a single-molecule level... But it seems I have to continue dreaming of this experiment - although others may try it as well since years.

Laurent Jalabert

It depends completely on the application you are targeting. Do you plan to use AFM in liquid ? on living cells/bio ? Do you need fluorescent microscope coupled with your AFM ?

Or is it for surface science like observing atoms on Si (111) ? Or for chemical imaging of different atoms on your surface ? Or for atomic manipulation ? Or thermal imaging ? or magnetic imaging ? or nano lithography by oxidizing the surface ?

Do you need vacuum conditions ? Do you have anti vibration stage (best is to work underground of course !), controlled humidity (if in air condition) and temperature ?

About the choice of tips, there are many makers (Smartip in the Netherlands, and many others) for many interesting applications, or even you can make your own.

Or maybe you can ask some labs who have AFMs to make some trials there. Or if you attend SEMICON exhibition, you may have the opportunity to test on live (it was the case in Japan).

For us, Asylum is very "opened" system, with inverted microscope, in controlled environment (not vacuum), and we make our own tips or buy to suppliers. There are external access (coax) to almost all part of the equipment (piezo, auxiliary). But observing in liquid is very tricky (obviously). For this purpose, we finally build up our own AFM system that is not commercialized, using thermal excitation and different resonant modes (torsional, …) of the home made cantilever. Lipid bilayers surface could be observed.

But now, the trend is maybe FAST-AFM systems (high speed), this is the next generation with improved electronics, and I think it is available from AIST in Japan (I think, need to confirm). They can observe some motors moving on microtubule almost in real time ! it is amazing.

Fernanda S Teixeira

I saw one of the answers mentioning that commercial systems are black box. The Nanoscope IIIA Multimode that we have is a completely black box. I am not sure about the new systems from Bruker. The Cypher from Asylum we have seems to be a very open system. There are several available channels you can manipulate, even to create new modes of operation. They also use a generic software called Igor. You can access all the line codes to see what the programs do and also it is possible to program what you need. I've heard that in Agilent systems you can manipulate the lock-in also, but I'm not familiar with them.

James Bowen

The JPK NanoWizard is a versatile instrument, capable of operating in a range of modes. I've worked with the NanoWizard II since Jan 2009, the instrument being used almost every day. Imaging in air (contact, intermittent contact) and force measurements (in air and liquid) are the most frequent tasks. Often the instrument is left to work over extended periods (24-72 h) uninterrupted, to obtain a series of scans over large areas. This is made possible by the Python scripts which can be used to program the instrument to perform sequenced tasks. I have also found the force curve designer a very useful feature.

I can strongly recommend this instrument, the accessories available (heating/cooling, Petri Dish heater, Electrochemical cell), the intuitive operating software, the data analysis software, and the support given by the JPK team.

Mohammad Ayaz Ahmad

Dear All

I am very much agreed with all answers / comments. Really, all information are very much meaningful and worthy.

Pedro J de Pablo

Dear all,

I have been using Nanotec Electronica AFMs (the same company developing the WSxM software) for a long time and they are one of the most stable and full of different measuring modes. If you know WSxM (free downloadable at www.nanotec.es) thats the quality level we are talking about. In particular, it has specific modes such us Jumping mode that allows a very precise control of the force you can apply to the sample. I use it very much for scanning viruses under buffer conditions.

They have a very open system, allowing standard measuring modes but also allowing custom measurements. Customer service is also good and people from Nanotec are very helpful.

Hello all, thanks. I have seen a demo on Jpk nanowizard.

I saw two different opinions. Bose says it the 'worst' system he has used but James has an opposite view.

Because JPK is the only company gave me a demo quickly, I would like to have more details on this system. My interest is to use it in liquid on biological/ colloidal system coupled with an inverted microscope. I also have interest in topological imaging of materials. Perhaps magnetic, thermal too.

Finally, as the system needs to be handled by graduate students, very often and hence ease in operation, friendly software module, ease in maintenance etc are important.

Dear Dr. John,

Ideally i would look into the following parameters as well:

1. Do they have an applications person that can help you with your research? This is important because AFM in biological samples is quite tricky. The trick is not in terms of the AFM, but sample preparation nuances for Bio AFM.

2. The applications person also tells how fast will they be able to address different issues that you will face during experimentation. The partnership is multifold in this case, commercial (you are purchasing), technical and also knowledge (the applications person can help immensely in this case by imparting knowledge to graduate students).

JPK is a very good instrument in Bio Applications, however i was very surprised which i did some background check on the number of publication they have from India. Their tally is quite low in this regard (i don't understand this). On the other hand this is not the case with Asylum (which came to market after JPK). Asylum Research publications have been growing on a steady pace.

Thanks Hitesh. Your points are very correct. Unfortunately, I don't find any application experts of jpk here. However, they promised to provide training at one of their R&D centers if we go for their system. Anyway, I plan to see the other systems too.

What are the critical spares I should buy along with the system? Many companies charge exhorbitantly for Spares.

Florian Krohs

We've been using the JPK NWII system now more than 5 years without any defect. Small hardware modifications were made by the company (during a joint EU funded project) and they provided us (for free, before start of the project) a small hardware component to realize force calibration on cantilevers with high resonance frequencies. We had a defect of the antivibration table after about 2 years, but that was within guarantee time and they fixed it within few days.

Depending on the system and your applications it might be useful to purchase more than only one cantilever holder. Especially if more than one person works with the equipment and you use pricy cantilevers that you want to reuse, this avoids the cantilever exchange on the cantilever holder which always is affected with small risk of damage.

Compared to the price of a commercial AFM, the initial costs of cantilevers may appear small, but in the long range one should consider these costs as well. I know, as with any competing companies, it will be good for them to be mentioned in later publications in the materials section, especially in first class journals. Same with cantilevers, but I guess that only the AFM developing labs can get "free samples". I remember in a very different, but internationally recognized lab (not AFM related) we got some cell culture products/consumables in the hundred thousand dollar per year basically for free so the company knew they would be mentioned in a first class journal... Such conditions may not apply to your area, lab or you may have enough funding, but in a still growing market potential in your not so small country, it may be important to any of these companies to have a new lab as reference...

ideally it would depend on the application. If we dissect the application that you have suggested:

1. Imaging in liquid of Biological samples

2. Force Spectroscopy on material and ability to do do imaging as well

3. Regular imaging

----------------------

With these three criteria in mind one can decide what kind of accessories that can be asked for:

1. Liquid cell imaging accessories.

2. Cantilevers for liquid imaging and for force Spectroscopy. In this case you have to choose different cantilevers with different spring constants. Check it out on Nano & More link:http://www.nanoandmore.com/afm_probes.php

3. Staying in cantilever, i can recommend BioLever Cantilevers from Olympus that are very good for soft samples in Liquid.

4. With liquid imaging, you will also have to understand how the chamber is made and it might be useful to get multiple chambers (if possible) so that if one leaks then you can quickly replace with another, before it can damage the scanner.

5. The system should be a Close Loop Feedback so that a hardware calibration is ON all the time and you do not get wrong data.

6. Integration with a Inverted Microscope with DIC, Phase Contrast etc.

7. A contract of AFM cantilevers where in you purchase in bulk but they can arrive once you have finished your previous batch. I am for this because in that case you do not have the problem of storing (in India due to humidity storing of these parts is a big problem). You can purchase a full wafer and can receive them as you go. Also cantilevers need to be treated as consumable and students have to use them.

8. AFM Tip spring constant calibration module. A cantilever that is not calibrated is useless for qualitative analysis for force spectroscopy. The values given on the box of the cantilever are of no use.

9. Possibility to have the feedback loop of the AFM in all modes i.e. Amplitude control (or Phase control) (AM or PM) & Frequency control (FM).

10. Different size of scanners. In case of cell imaging you will meed a scanner that is in excess of 100 um x 100 um. Where as in case of Force Spectroscopy you will need a very small scanner. Both cannot be done with one scanner (i can elaborate on this more).

11. Moreover you will need expertise guidance in terms of cell imaging because it is not trivial. If you look at data that is coming out in academic papers, not much is being done in this regard.

I had done a comparison on this very topic last month on my blog, but it was more of an analysis on which system is good, you can have a look at that as well, link: http://energyatom.com/2013/10/with-atomic-force-microscope-is-best-wrt-indian-research/

All the best

Hitesh

Mohammad Ayaz Ahmad

Dear Hitesh Mamgain

Very nice informations. Can you provide me some tips to operate AFM or litrature regarding this.

Dear Ahmad,

Fundamental theory of AFM will remain the same but operation will change with respect to different AFMs deepening on the different user interface that provide. If you want specific experimental information the the Journal of Review of Scientific Instruments would be a good source. If you want information on specific AFM then the best place to start would be to get in touch with an Application Scientist for the company. Many of these companies conduct training in-house at their facility for users.

Mohammad Ayaz Ahmad

Dear Hitesh Mamgain

A lot of thank for you kind information. Please give me some link of the companies, who are responsible for the training of AFM, if it is easily possible for you. I just want learn as a beginner / fresher. At present I want to study general characteristics of nano films.

Usually, 15 micrometer in the z-axis may be more than enough for most applications, but sometimes, especially trying to measure cell-to-cell interactions, this may not be enough since cells can make long tethers and not always separate.

It is often useful to have a light microscope attached from underneath for controlling and adjusting the system and picking, fishing or mounting the right cell or sample.

Pablo Ares

Dear all,

Here you have the link to a book chapter that gives a lot of helpful information to work with biological samples in buffer conditions with AFM:

http://link.springer.com/protocol/10.1007%2F978-1-61779-261-8_6

For the question considered in this thread, authors used Nanotec and Asylum AFMs.

Ilya V. Vorotyntsev

I have not a bit experience to work with AFM, but we using SPM-9700 from Shimadzu...It's working ok up to 512 pix resolution on less than 2 nm...in this case we working during the night when no such big vibrations around...

Christoph Huber

Hello John,

I have already worked on several different AFMs, like the Ntegra Aura and Spectra (the last one I only know from a demo), the XE-120 (built on an inverted microscope) from Park System, the NanoWizard II from JPK and the Nanoscope III which was bought by Bruker recently and is called MultiMode 8 now.

Based on my personal experience I have listed the different setups in the way I would recommend them. The thing I really like most is the flexibility given by Ntegra setups. It is very easy to adapt the software that it fits your personal needs and so it is with the hardware. It is built modular so you can extend your setup afterwards, in case you don´t have enough budget at the beginning ;)

They provide all kind of different scanners (head scanner, bottom scanner), which might be crucial if you plan to make high resolution (small scan area with no sensor) and big area (with sensors) scans, as for high resolution capacity sensors may decrease your resolution.

And the onine support is incredible. They have nearly 24 hours live chat, where you can discuss your problems with a service engineer. They even support you if you want to substitute one of their commercial products with a home-built one!!! (e.g. liquid cell, SAM [Signal Access Module])

I will not comment on the other setups I have worked on to shorten a little bit my answer to your question but as Tamás Haraszti has already said most new AFMs, if not super low budget should be good enough to fulfill your requirements. If you have further questions feel free to contact me.

Best Christoph

Arun Aravind

Dear John,

The choice of AFM's varies with your field of interest.. We used Agilent 5500 Series AFM. We got nice images using Agilent model and its very nice for the biological samples too. If you can contact these people they will give you a demo in their own labs and you can send some samples to them for the measurements and you can cross check it easily. Ultimately the quality of the image improves with tip scanning AFM's. The Agilent one we can easily load the tip and samples and it a hanging type AFM.

One more thing to keep in mind as the scan area increases the resolution of the final image reduces, so you can choose a small scanner and large scanner separately for different purposes.. During my Phd we used the system easily and it performs very well..

Thanks. Lots of insights from you guys. I am going to see measurements on some of my samples first. It should help me to take a decision. Budget is not a constraint. Want a robust, trouble free quality product.

It's amazing that there are so many companies sell AFM. We don't have so much options for other instruments!

Tanya Dahms

I recently did a great deal of research for a grant application to purchase a new AFM, and during that process I took into account all considerations listed above by our colleagues. I have worked with many AFMs (Thermo, DI, MI, Veeco etc.) from many different companies over the last fifteen years, and the instrument I ultimately chose and purchased was the JPK Nanowizard 3, which has most everything I want and need. I have the AFM semi-permanently mounted on a Zeiss A1 light microscope with DIC, and proximal to a Zeiss Z1 wide-field fluorescence microscope and LSM 780 confocal (with two-photon) for integrated microscopy. We image everything from lipid bilayers to microbes and human cells. Admittedly the 15 u z-range is a bit limiting for some biological applications, but that is easily overcome by simultaneous optical imaging. We especially appreciate the quantitative imaging. My advice is to get as many demonstrations as possible and if you do not have a great deal of AFM experience yourself, make sure that the company is able to demonstrate to you that they are able to use their instrument to produce the data that you need. Good luck!

Lida Ghassemzadeh

Bruker MultiMode 8 AFM is a good device for force measurement. The ContourGT-K 3D Optical Microscope is my suggestion for the best imaging resolution. Bruker has some webinar specifically of AFT topic which could give you a good over view:

http://www.bruker.com/service/education-training/webinars/afm.html

best

Arun Aravind

Dear John,

1. We usually do a long range scan and find out the overall morphology of the sample.

2. After getting a reliable image, we do the phase imaging (Using AFM software)

3. Then we locate the specific region and do a slow scan in that region....

André Kempe

PeakForce QNM (Bruker) delivers excellent quantitative characterization of materials on the nanoscale. from my own expericence with topometrix, jpk, park, agilent: I can say this is the best for quantification.

Yuriy Kudriavtsev

Hi, John.

Please,give more details: your samples, the scan area, the speed of measuremets (if critical), automation, your budget, etc.

All instruments from NT-MDT gives nice resolution and image:

http://www.ntmdt.com/

This company has a special integrating system for magnetic electric, and other surface force measurement. They have two fully automated AFMs.

A new Hybrid mode offers a nice quality with ultrahigh speed and simultaneous force measurements:

http://www.ntmdt.com/page/hybrid-controller

Anyone used A.P.E.Research srl (Italy) AFM? I saw demo of one of their systems.

Their claims:

"AFM equipped with flexure scanning stage in order to eliminate piezotube typical creep and hysteresis problems. The flexure scanning stage g guarantees a high planarity for customers interested in large area imaging and force measurements in air or liquid"

"Software and hardware switchable for high voltage/low voltage and open loop and

closed loop operations"

Price is very affordable but long term support is not so sure.

Pedro J de Pablo

Dear John Philip

Very interesting question and difficult to respond, since each company will tell you that they are the best. Many AFMs work like toasters, where you push buttons and get nice "phase", "amplitude", "young Modulus", etc, images, with different plugged models. My suggestion would be to adquire an AFM of open concept, where you can modifiy both the hardware and software. Of course, this requires a major effort, but in the long term you will control your data and research by your own.

Best.

Pedro