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Three-dimensional imaging of short-range chemical forces with picometre resolution

Nature Nanotechnology volume 4, pages 307–310 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Chemical forces on surfaces have a central role in numerous scientific and technological fields, including catalysis1,2, thin film growth3 and tribology4,5. Many applications require knowledge of the strength of these forces as a function of position in three dimensions, but until now such information has only been available from theory2. Here, we demonstrate an approach based on atomic force microscopy that can obtain this data, and we use this approach to image the three-dimensional surface force field of graphite. We show force maps with picometre and piconewton resolution that allow a detailed characterization of the interaction between the surface and the tip of the microscope in three dimensions. In these maps, the positions of all atoms are identified, and differences between atoms at inequivalent sites are quantified. The results suggest that the excellent lubrication properties of graphite may be due to a significant localization of the lateral forces.

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Figure 1: Illustration of the data acquisition and analysis scheme.
Figure 2: The structure and three-dimensional energy field of stacked graphene sheets.
Figure 3: Different representations of force and dissipation data.
Figure 4: Atomic-scale lateral forces.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation (MRSEC DMR 0520495), the Department of Energy (DE-FG02-06ER15834) and the Petroleum Research Fund (42259-AC5).

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Author notes

  1. Nicolas Pilet & Marcus Liebmann

    Present address: Present address: EMPA Materials Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland (N.P.); II. Institute of Physics, Technical University of Aachen, Aachen, Germany (M.L.),

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena (CRISP), Yale University, New Haven, USA

    Boris J. Albers, Todd C. Schwendemann, Mehmet Z. Baykara, Nicolas Pilet, Marcus Liebmann & Udo D. Schwarz

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering and Center for Research on Interface Structures and Phenomena (CRISP), Yale University, New Haven, USA

    Todd C. Schwendemann & Eric I. Altman

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Correspondence to Udo D. Schwarz.

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Albers, B., Schwendemann, T., Baykara, M. et al. Three-dimensional imaging of short-range chemical forces with picometre resolution. Nature Nanotech 4, 307–310 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2009.57

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