Abstract
Conventional atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips have remained largely unchanged in nanomachining processes, constituent materials, and microstructural constructions for decades, which limits the measurement performance based on force-sensing feedbacks. In order to save the scanning images from distortions due to excessive mechanical interactions in the intermittent shear-mode contact between scanning tips and sample, we propose the application of controlled microstructural architectured material to construct AFM tips by exploiting material-related energy-absorbing behavior in response to the tip–sample impact, leading to visual promotions of imaging quality. Evidenced by numerical analysis of compressive responses and practical scanning tests on various samples, the essential scanning functionality and the unique contribution of the cellular buffer layer to imaging optimization are strongly proved. This approach opens new avenues towards the specific applications of cellular solids in the energy-absorption field and sheds light on novel AFM studies based on 3D-printed tips possessing exotic properties.
Highlights
Conventional atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips have remained largely unchanged in nanomachining processes, constituent materials, and microstructural constructions for decades, which limits the measurement performance based on force-sensing feedbacks
We propose the application of controlled microstructural architectured (CMA) material in AFM tip construction based on shear-force-imaging mode to reduce the mechanical impact that the sample surface is subjected to from scanning tips during the scanning process and improves the overall imaging quality
The unit cell is created in the form of a regular tetrahedron with four vertexes connected to its center while removing the connectivity of its peripheral boundaries
Summary
Conventional atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips have remained largely unchanged in nanomachining processes, constituent materials, and microstructural constructions for decades, which limits the measurement performance based on force-sensing feedbacks. As a succession to natural instances in motion deceleration, shockwave suppression, and mechanical force reduction[14], porous structures widely found in biological skeletal systems such as cancellous bones have been extensively investigated in numerous energy-absorbing applications[15,16,17,18] Emulating these geometrical constructions and coupling with advanced additive manufacturing techniques in microscale, artificial cellular microarchitectures, referred to as controlled microstructural architectured (CMA) material[19,20,21], can be structurally programmed with a controllable geometry and spatial configuration for advantageous sizedependent metamechanical properties[22,23], such as low density but strong robustness[24], high stiffness-to-weight ratio[25], excellent resilience[26,27], mechanical tunability[28,29], and in particular, energy absorption[30,31,32,33]. The unique concept of the CMA-constructed AFM tips and its superior performance offers unprecedented opportunities in versatile AFM applications
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