Capillary and van der Waals interactions on CaF₂ crystals from amplitude modulation AFM force reconstruction profiles under ambient conditions

• Annalisa Calò,
• Oriol Vidal Robles,
• Sergio Santos and
• Albert Verdaguer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 809–819, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.84

• , and a third one in which the attractive force is almost constant, i.e., forms a plateau, up to 3–4 nm above the surface when the formation of a capillary neck dominates the tip–sample interaction. Keywords: amplitude modulation (AM) AFM; dynamic capillary interactions; dissipative nanoscale

• interactions; CaF2 wetting; force reconstruction; Introduction The study of the forces and energies released when a nanometric tip and a surface are progressively brought into contact has driven much of the recent investigation in atomic force microscopy (AFM) and has allowed for the mapping of materials