Some issues on atomic force microscopy based surface characterization

Abstract:

Influences of tip radius and sampling interval on applying atomic force microscopy(AFM)in quantitative surface evaluations are investigated by numerical simulations and experiments. Several evaluation parameters of surfaces ranging from amplitude to functional parameters are studied. Numerical and experimental results are in good agreements. The accuracy of estimating tip radius on random rough surface with Gaussian distribution of heights using a blind reconstruction method is also discussed theoretically. It is found that the accuracy is greatly depending on the ratio of actual tip radius to rootmean-square (rms) radius of curvature. To obtain an accurate estimation of tip radius under Gaussian rough surface, the ratio has to be larger than 3/2.