<title>Improving atomic force microscopy images with the adaptation of ultrasonic force microscopy</title>

Abstract

The quest for technical advancements is leading scientists to study how devices interact on the nanometer scale. There is a growing need for material characterization techniques, which can image, detect damage/changes, and characterize the material and its engineered structures in the nanometer region. One of the most powerful tools that are routinely used for characterization of nanostructured materials is Atomic Force Microscopy. The Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) provides a 3 dimensional surface topographic image of a sample. When imaging a sample's surface, a 10-micron or smaller area maybe fairly flat so that the AFM image provides very little detail and contrast even though the overall sample surface is quite rough. Ultrasonic Force Microscopy (UFM) has been developed in order to improve the image contrast on flat areas of interest where the AFM topography images are limited in contrast. The combination of AFM-UFM allows a near field acoustic microscopic image to be generated. The AFM tip is used to detect the ultrasonic waves and overcomes the lateral resolution limit of the acoustic wavelength that occurs in acoustic microscopy. By using the elastic changes under the AFM tip, an image of much greater detail than the AFM topography can be generated. Nondestructive evaluation and material characterization on ceramic and copper applications in which the addition of UFM has greatly improved upon the AFM images is presented.