Ion mobility and material transport on KBr in air as a function of the relative humidity

• Dominik J. Kirpal,
• Korbinian Pürckhauer,
• Alfred J. Weymouth and
• Franz J. Giessibl

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 2084–2093, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.203

• depth. We deliberately created two types of defects: poking holes and scratching holes. Poking holes are deep and narrow holes, created by poking the tip several nanometers into the surface. This results in a steep hole with a shape similar to the tip apex. The removed material mainly accumulates around

• important. AFM enables high lateral resolution, although the imaging of structures with rough topographies is challenging. When scanning rugged surfaces the back structure of the tip apex becomes more important. As the tip follows the surface while keeping the tip–sample interaction constant, side effects

Subsurface imaging of flexible circuits via contact resonance atomic force microscopy

• Wenting Wang,
• Chengfu Ma,
• Yuhang Chen,
• Lei Zheng,
• Huarong Liu and
• Jiaru Chu

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1636–1647, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.159

• into account for a blunt conical tip [34][35]. In our calculations, a half-cone angle of 15° was determined for the adopted probes, which was in accordance with the manufacturer’s specifications. The tip apex radius was averaged to be approximately 50 nm according to scanning electron microscopy

• the corresponding sample deformations at the position of the tip apex. The contact stiffness on the polymer substrate was solved by utilizing the same model, but with the middle layer material changed to PMMA. The mechanical properties of the materials in FEA calculations can be found in Table 2

Nanoscale spatial mapping of mechanical properties through dynamic atomic force microscopy

• Zahra Abooalizadeh,
• Leszek Josef Sudak and
• Philip Egberts

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1332–1347, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.132

• . The zero applied normal force was determined by measuring the average deflection of the cantilever when the tip was far from the HOPG surface. The lateral force is defined as the measured twisting signal of the cantilever during scanning. Post-mortem images of the tip apex were captured with a Tecnai

• , given that the material systems are constant, the shape of the tip apex will then determine the adhesive interaction between the tip and sample. This section will examine the influence of the applied normal force on the measurement of the elastic modulus of the steps in comparison with the terraces of

• tip shape or the modulation frequency. To focus more on the influence of tip radius, a comparison must be drawn between the various CR measurements shown in Figure 4 and Figure 7, where measurements have been conducted with tip B and D, respectively. The tip apex radius changes from 25 nm in tip B to

Molecular attachment to a microscope tip: inelastic tunneling, Kondo screening, and thermopower

• Rouzhaji Tuerhong,
• Mauro Boero and
• Jean-Pierre Bucher

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1243–1250, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.124

• level [21]. By approaching the STM tip towards a molecule on the Au(111) surface, it is possible to transfer a single MnPc molecule from the surface to the tip apex of the STM. Then the presence of a molecule on the tip can be directly confirmed by the reverse transfer process, i.e., by applying a

• shown in the Figure 1c. Additionallly, the MnPc molecule deposited from the STM tip exhibits the characteristic topographic and spectroscopic features of MnPc adsorbed on Au(111), confirming that this process does not damage the MnPc molecule initially transferred to the tip apex. Furthermore the

• reversible molecule transfer process between the tip and the surface indicates that the MnPc molecule is attached to the STM tip apex and not to any other site on the tip. Vibration-mediated electron transport in a molecular junction In the following, the electron transport through a MnPc molecule suspended

Imaging the surface potential at the steps on the rutile TiO₂(110) surface by Kelvin probe force microscopy

• Masato Miyazaki,
• Huan Fei Wen,
• Quanzhen Zhang,
• Yuuki Adachi,
• Jan Brndiar,
• Ivan Štich,
• Yan Jun Li and
• Yasuhiro Sugawara

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1228–1236, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.122

• Waals force is dominant and the contribution of the force from the tip apex becomes weak and the force from the rest of the cantilever becomes significant. Therefore, the observed height of step was smaller than that of the real one. Before the experiments, we verified that the distance calibration of

• dipole moment due to the chemical bond between the tip apex and surface atoms [50]. The induced dipole moment appears only in the short-range regime. As shown in Figure 2e and Figure 2f, we measured the FSR curve on the terrace and then obtained the Z–X KPFM data along the black line in Figure 2a in the

Intuitive human interface to a scanning tunnelling microscope: observation of parity oscillations for a single atomic chain

• Sumit Tewari,
• Jacob Bakermans,
• Christian Wagner,
• Federica Galli and
• Jan M. van Ruitenbeek

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 337–348, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.33

• refer to as point contact pushing (PCP) technique. Keywords: adatom imaging; mechanical annealing; scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM); STM tip; tip apex; Introduction It is of fundamental interest both for chemists and physicists to study the electronic transport through single atoms and molecules

• preparing a crystalline tip apex up to the second atomic layer from the apex atom. In this method mechanical annealing cycles are used to achieve a more regular atomic packing. Furthermore, by imaging an adatom placed above a smooth Au surface the structure of the tip apex is imaged, and a smooth and

• reproducible evolution to a symmetric structure of the second layer from the tip apex atom is reported [18]. Results and Discussion In this section we will show how the above system with the real-time MD simulation works using some simple lateral manipulation test followed by an experiment where we lifted a

Nitrous oxide as an effective AFM tip functionalization: a comparative study

• Taras Chutora,
• Bruno de la Torre,
• Pingo Mutombo,
• Jack Hellerstedt,
• Jaromír Kopeček,
• Pavel Jelínek and
• Martin Švec

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 315–321, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.30

• characterize the adsorption of the N2O species on Au(111) by means of atomic force microscopy with CO-functionalized tips and density functional theory (DFT) simulations. Subsequently we devise a method of attaching a single N2O to a metal tip apex and benchmark its high-resolution imaging and spectroscopic

• capabilities using FePc molecules. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of high-resolution imaging. However, we find an inherent asymmetry of the N2O probe-particle adsorption on the tip apex, in contrast to a CO tip reference. These findings are consistent with DFT calculations of the N2O- and CO tip

• . Functionalization of a metallic tip apex with a single carbon monoxide molecule (CO) was the key to achieve submolecular resolution for the first time, on a pentacene molecule [1]. This milestone initiated a vigorous development of the technique that now serves a variety of purposes. For example, it can identify

Apparent tunneling barrier height and local work function of atomic arrays

• Neda Noei,
• Alexander Weismann and
• Richard Berndt

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 3048–3052, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.283

• tip apex. The absolute values are obtained using the calibration of the piezoelectric transducer, which leads to an estimated uncertainty of 10%. The ratios between them, however, are not affected. The maximal apparent barrier height is measured on Cu adatoms. It exceeds the minimal value, which is

Electrostatic force microscopy for the accurate characterization of interphases in nanocomposites

• Diana El Khoury,
• Richard Arinero,
• Jean-Charles Laurentie,
• Mikhaël Bechelany,
• Michel Ramonda and
• Jérôme Castellon

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2999–3012, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.279

• describes these interactions is defined as follows: where z is the distance between the tip apex and the sample surface, qt is the sum of all charges interacting with the surface static charges qs, and the total voltage difference ΔV is expressed as: where VDC and VACsin(ωt) are the DC and AC externally

Investigation of CVD graphene as-grown on Cu foil using simultaneous scanning tunneling/atomic force microscopy

• Majid Fazeli Jadidi,
• Umut Kamber,
• Oğuzhan Gürlü and
• H. Özgür Özer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2953–2959, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.274

• atomic structure of the tip apex. The fact that there is no sign of an abrupt change in the scans in both channels and the gradual increase in height in STM scan, which amounts up to 1 Å, may have suggested a real height change due to buckling/twisting of the topmost layer or change in LDOS between the

In situ characterization of nanoscale contaminations adsorbed in air using atomic force microscopy

• Jesús S. Lacasa,
• Lisa Almonte and
• Jaime Colchero

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2925–2935, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.271

• observed on the flat part of the cantilever and on the sides of the tip cone. Even though we have not been able to image the tip apex at high resolution we believe that our observation supports the hypothesis that if the composition of the whole cantilever is uniform then the contamination observed on the

• flat part of the cantilever is analogous to the contamination present on its tip. We assume that the contamination layer behaves like a carpet covering all parts of the cantilever, and in particular also the tip apex used as probe in AFM applications. We conclude that if the material of the whole

• characterization and checking of the tip–sample system, without needing to remove the tip and/or the sample from the AFM setup. To infer the contamination of the tip we have adopted the assumption that, if the whole cantilever is composed of the same material then the contamination should cover the tip apex, the

Low cost tips for tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy fabricated by two-step electrochemical etching of 125 µm diameter gold wires

• Antonino Foti,
• Francesco Barreca,
• Enza Fazio,
• Cristiano D’Andrea,
• Paolo Matteini,
• Onofrio Maria Maragò and
• Pietro Giuseppe Gucciardi

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2718–2729, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.254

• tip is the key element in TERS. Its field enhancement and confinement capabilities determine the signal amplification, the spatial resolution and the reproducibility of the results. The material, morphology, aspect ratio and size of the tip apex are expected to determine the optical properties of the

• drops of HCl and rinsing in ethanol and water. This eliminates residual impurities from the surface. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) inspection of the produced tips is carried out to characterize the tip apex using a Zeiss Merlin field emission electron microscope, equipped with a Gemini II column

• featuring 1200 gr/mm and sent to a Peltier cooled CCD camera (Syncerity, Horiba Jobin Yvon). The laser spot is positioned on the tip apex with the aid of a piezoelectric x–y–z table that scans the objective position. The x–y scan plane is orthogonal to the optical axis (z) of the objective. Results and

Characterization of the microscopic tribological properties of sandfish (Scincus scincus) scales by atomic force microscopy

• Weibin Wu,
• Christian Lutz,
• Simon Mersch,
• Richard Thelen,
• Christian Greiner,
• Guillaume Gomard and
• Hendrik Hölscher

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2618–2627, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.243

• Schwarz and co-workers [17]. The ramp rate of the adhesion measurements was set to 1 µm/s. Microscopic friction was measured by scanning sample surfaces with a scan size of 20 µm × 20 µm and a defined loading force Fload while recording the lateral forces acting on the tip apex. Averaging these values

Know your full potential: Quantitative Kelvin probe force microscopy on nanoscale electrical devices

• Amelie Axt,
• Ilka M. Hermes,
• Victor W. Bergmann,
• Niklas Tausendpfund and
• Stefan A. L. Weber

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1809–1819, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.172

• capacitance. Thus, FM detection is more sensitive to the electrostatic interaction of the tip apex with the sample surface [20]. Originally, the peroiodic oscillations in Δf were directly detected by means of a phased-locked loop in non-contact AFM under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. An elegant way of

• mechanical oscillation amplitude and to C′′. As C′′ is more sensitive to local tip–apex/sample interactions [20], FM-KPFM usually leads to a superior lateral and voltage resolution [18][19][23][24][25][26]. On the other hand, the force signal is usually much stronger than the force gradient signal. Thus

Friction force microscopy of tribochemistry and interfacial ageing for the SiO_x/Si/Au system

• Christiane Petzold,
• Marcus Koch and
• Roland Bennewitz

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1647–1658, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.157

• measurements The friction and wear of five tip–sample material pairs were investigated, namely Au/Si–oxidized Si(100), Au/Si–reactive Si(100), Au/Si–Au(111), SiOx/Si–reactive Si(100), and SiOx/Si–Au(111). By activating the tip apex a tribochemical reaction between tip and surface was triggered and the changes

• in friction were recorded during subsequent scanning. Activating the tip apex in a controlled manner was essential for the experiments. Methods to activate different tips are summarized in Table 1. Friction force experiments were performed in the following sequence: First, an overview image (1 μm2

• tip height. One Au/Si tip apex was analyzed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM; JEM-2100(HR) LaB6, JEOL GmbH, Eching, Germany, 200 kV acceleration voltage) after activation on Au(111) and sliding experiments. The tip was cut using a focused ion beam (Versa3D; FEI, Eindhoven, Netherlands) to a

Optical near-field mapping of plasmonic nanostructures prepared by nanosphere lithography

• Gitanjali Kolhatkar,
• Alexandre Merlen,
• Jiawei Zhang,
• Chahinez Dab,
• Gregory Q. Wallace,
• François Lagugné-Labarthet and
• Andreas Ruediger

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1536–1543, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.144

• configuration provides a confined and strongly enhanced electromagnetic field at the tip apex. It has been shown in TERS measurements that depolarization mechanisms can be induced by the tip [27] while the exact physical origin remains unclear. We suggest that this feature accounts for the lack of polarization

Imaging of viscoelastic soft matter with small indentation using higher eigenmodes in single-eigenmode amplitude-modulation atomic force microscopy

• Miead Nikfarjam,
• Enrique A. López-Guerra,
• Santiago D. Solares and
• Babak Eslami

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1116–1122, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.103

• ], which agree that during the loading portion (monotonically increasing tip–sample contact radius) the relationship between force and displacement is given by: where ζ is a dummy variable used to perform the convolution integral, Fts is the tip–sample contact force, R is the radius of curvature of the tip

• apex, δ is the tip indentation and G(t) is the shear relaxation modulus, which in our case is described by the Generalized Maxwell (also called Wiechert) model (see Figure 1): where τn = ηn/Gn is the ratio between viscosity (ηn) and modulus (Gn) in the n-th arm in the model in Figure 1. The values for

Electro-optical interfacial effects on a graphene/π-conjugated organic semiconductor hybrid system

• Karolline A. S. Araujo,
• Luiz A. Cury,
• Matheus J. S. Matos,
• Thales F. D. Fernandes,
• Luiz G. Cançado and
• Bernardo R. A. Neves

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 963–974, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.90

• the tip apex. In order to analyze the electrical response of the RA/graphene hybrid, the following experimental procedure was employed: during image acquisition, the RA monolayer edge was kept perpendicular to the horizontal (fast scan) direction, while the slow scan (vertical) axis was disabled. In

Towards the third dimension in direct electron beam writing of silver

• Katja Höflich,
• Jakub Mateusz Jurczyk,
• Katarzyna Madajska,
• Maximilian Götz,
• Luisa Berger,
• Carlos Guerra-Nuñez,
• Caspar Haverkamp,
• Iwona Szymanska and
• Ivo Utke

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 842–849, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.78

• through the nanostructure. The EDX spectra taken on the apex of the pillars are displayed in Figure 3d. The observed Si peak implies that the EDX spectrum from the primary electrons (tip apex) is superimposed by X-ray signals generated by forward scattered electrons (reaching the substrate). Neglecting

Combined pulsed laser deposition and non-contact atomic force microscopy system for studies of insulator metal oxide thin films

• Daiki Katsube,
• Hayato Yamashita,
• Satoshi Abo and
• Masayuki Abe

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 686–692, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.63

• AFM tip apex as well as to clean the PLD-treated sample surface. Simultaneous AFM/STM [29] measurements can be performed using a conductive tip. Results and Discussion Preparation of atomically flat surfaces with PLD For atomic scale observations of the metal oxide surface, it is necessary to prepare

• a clean and flat surface at the atomic level over a wide area. This is to avoid changes in the tip apex due to the presence of protrusions on the surface. Although there have been studies in which the growth of atomically flat metal oxides has been demonstrated [3][13][27][28][52][53][54][55], it is

A robust AFM-based method for locally measuring the elasticity of samples

• Alexandre Bubendorf,
• Stefan Walheim,
• Thomas Schimmel and
• Ernst Meyer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1–10, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.1

• the tip apex and the surface is large enough, the generated stress increases gently enough to deform the sample surface elastically. This elastic phase does not occur if the steps of the Z-scanner, which are responsible for increasing the applied normal force, are too big. In this case, the generated

• below a threshold value σ0, the deformation becomes elastic. The red area of the tip apex describes the contact area of the tip. The striped area shows the region of the sample plastically deformed during indentation. The arrow at the tip apex represents the applied normal force FN; the arrows on the

• . On the right, a schematic of the tip–sample interaction is depicted. Loosely bound FDTS molecules are able to migrate to the AFM tip and can therefore functionalize by forming a thin layer on the tip apex. Value of the inverse of the fitting curve slope of Z(FN,meas) for the measured samples in

Robust procedure for creating and characterizing the atomic structure of scanning tunneling microscope tips

• Sumit Tewari,
• Koen M. Bastiaans,
• Milan P. Allan and
• Jan M. van Ruitenbeek

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2389–2395, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.238

• to the second atomic layer. We demonstrate a controlled evolution of such tips starting from undefined tip shapes. Keywords: adatom imaging; mechanical annealing; scanning tunneling microscopy (STM); STM tip; tip apex; Introduction After the advent of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in 1981

• -temperature annealing as for many semiconductors. However, a well defined tip structure at the atomic scale is still hard to achieve. Mechanical grinding [1], electro-polishing [11] or electrochemical etching [12][13] are standard ex situ methods for preparing microscopically sharp tips. The tip apex can be

• metal surface [16], knowledge of the tip shape is crucial. Chen [17] has shown that the contrast of STM images depends on the choice of orbitals at the tip apex, explaining why decorating the tip apex with small molecules such as CO [18][19][20] has a large impact on image quality. These tip decorations

Ester formation at the liquid–solid interface

• Nguyen T. N. Ha,
• Thiruvancheril G. Gopakumar,
• Nguyen D. C. Yen,
• Carola Mende,
• Lars Smykalla,
• Maik Schlesinger,
• Roy Buschbeck,
• Tobias Rüffer,
• Heinrich Lang,
• Michael Mehring and
• Michael Hietschold

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 2139–2150, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.213

• rest undisturbed for one day. From the optically clear supernatant 2 μL were put on a freshly cleaved HOPG (0001) basal plane substrate and in situ investigated using STM mechanically cut Pt(80)/Ir(20) tips. During imaging, the tip apex is introduced into the droplet deposited at the HOPG substrate

(Metallo)porphyrins for potential materials science applications

• Lars Smykalla,
• Carola Mende,
• Michael Fronk,
• Pablo F. Siles,
• Michael Hietschold,
• Georgeta Salvan,
• Dietrich R. T. Zahn,
• Oliver G. Schmidt,
• Tobias Rüffer and
• Heinrich Lang

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1786–1800, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.180

• the proposed transfer of 2H from H2TPP (= H2TPP(OH)4) to the tip apex and from the tip back to the dehydrogenated molecule by voltage pulses (1→2→1). Reproduced with permission from [45], copyright 2014 Elsevier. Left: Evolution of the XPS spectra of Br 3d for a molecular monolayer of CuTPP(Br)8 on Au

Transport characteristics of a silicene nanoribbon on Ag(110)

• Ryoichi Hiraoka,
• Chun-Liang Lin,
• Kotaro Nakamura,
• Ryo Nagao,
• Maki Kawai,
• Ryuichi Arafune and
• Noriaki Takagi

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1699–1704, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.170

• drastically changed before and after the measurement except for a bright spot which arises from a small cluster dropped from the tip apex. Thus, we have concluded that the peak structure originates from the intrinsic properties of the SiNR. Now let us examine the origin of the peak structure observed for the