understand complex systems and better engineer their functions has been driving scanning probe microscopies since their inception (see figure 1). Both atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Raman spectroscopy are techniques used to gather information about the surface properties and chemical information of a sample. There are many reasons to combine these two technologies, and this application note ...

The scaling index method was used in order to analyze atomic force microscopic images of double stranded DNA (plasmid PUC 8) adsorbed to mica. With this algorithm the image can be decomposed into constituents of different dimensionality, i.e. point-like, thread-like, and area-like structures, and residual noise. Special focus is on the evaluation of this method for the future automated analysis...

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a state of the art imaging system that uses a sharp probe to scan backwards and forwards over the surface of an object. The probe tip can have atomic dimensions, meaning that AFM can image the surface of an object at near atomic resolution. Two big advantages of AFM compared to other methods (for example scanning tunneling microscopy) are: the samples in AFM mea...

Electron radiation induced hydrocarbon contamination can be either a problem or a useful tool in electron beam analyses and lithographies. We have used atomic force microscopy to study electron beam written contamination structures. Contamination is shown not only to arise from the primary electron beam but also from the energy scattered outside of the direct impingement area. The size of the c...

Adsorption and manipulation of organic molecules at inorganic surfaces has attracted much attention due to potential applications in molecular electronics. In particular, single porphyrinbased molecules deposited on copper substrates have recently been investigated and manipulated by means of their interaction with the STM tip [1]. Studying and manipulating similar and more complex organic mole...

The first observation of double-stranded DNA by atomic force microscopy in the late 1980’s greatly encouraged many biological researchers to jump into the nanoworld. Here we briefly review the history of how AFM has been utilized to reveal nanometer-scale structures of DNA-protein complexes, and we highlight key technical developments that have accelerated applications of AFM to molecular biolo...

Proper force calibration is a critical step in atomic and lateral force microscopies (AFM/LFM). The recently published torsional Sader method [C. P. Green et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 75, 1988 (2004)] facilitates the calculation of torsional spring constants of rectangular AFM cantilevers by eliminating the need to obtain information or make assumptions regarding the cantilever's material propert...

A new electromechanical coupling model was built to quantitatively analyze the tuning fork probes, especially the complex ones. A special feature of a novel, soft tuning fork probe, that the second eigenfrequency of the probe was insensitive to the effective force gradient, was found and used in a homemade bimodal atomic force microscopy to measure power dissipation quantitatively. By transform...

Microscopy has incited many of the greatest revolutions in scientific history. In particular, these inventions have sparked paradigm shifts in biology, and discoveries like the structure of DNA are indebted to such studies. The development of the field spans from recent work like scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy to the original optical microscope, which dates back hundre...

In this paper, vertical scanning interferometry (VSI) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used to characterize the topography of several nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membrane surfaces. Comparing roughness results from the two different characterization techniques revealed u f o a m ©