Material discrimination and mixture ratio estimation in nanocomposites via harmonic atomic force microscopy

• Weijie Zhang,
• Yuhang Chen,
• Xicheng Xia and
• Jiaru Chu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2771–2780, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.276

• applications in various fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Keywords: atomic force microscopy; harmonic imaging; material discrimination; mixture ratio; nanocomposites; Introduction Because of its extreme importance and widespread applications, nanocomposites have received more and more attention [1

• , the better the material discrimination. The corresponding contrast values are 0.9, 3.4, 9.8, 11.5, 10.2, 6.5 and 5.5. It is obvious that the harmonic image has the largest contrast and amplitude difference at the set-point of approximately 0.25. To interpret and ascertain the experimental dependence

• almost no sensitivity to material differences. Material discrimination and mixture ratio estimation After systematic investigations on the influencing factors, we turn to the application of harmonic imaging in material discrimination and mixture ratio estimation of nanocomposite components. The samples

Multiple regimes of operation in bimodal AFM: understanding the energy of cantilever eigenmodes

• Daniel Kiracofe,
• Arvind Raman and
• Dalia Yablon

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 385–393, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.45

• bimodal AFM operation (or even multiple higher eigenmodes simultaneously [9]). In this work, we wish to examine the choice of specific higher order eigenmodes for bimodal operation in order to understand if they provide any practical advantages in terms of material discrimination and identification. There