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Interatomic force laws that evade dynamic measurement

Nature Nanotechnology volume 13, pages 1088–1091 (2018)Cite this article

A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 09 January 2019

This article has been updated

Abstract

Measurement of the force between two atoms is performed routinely with the atomic force microscope. The shape of this interatomic force law is now found to directly regulate this capability: rapidly varying interatomic force laws, which are common in nature, can corrupt their own measurement.

The success of the atomic force microscope (AFM) in quantifying structure and forces at molecular and atomic levels hinges on the extreme precision with which the response of its force-sensing microcantilever can be measured1,2. Changes in the AFM cantilever’s deflection at the picometre scale and absolute detection of its resonant frequency at the parts per million level are measured regularly.

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Fig. 1: Frequency-modulation force spectroscopy.
Fig. 2: Inflection point test for assessing the ill-posedness of force measurements.

Change history

  • 09 January 2019

    In the version of this Comment originally published, equation (4) was incorrect; see the correction notice for details. This has now been corrected in the online versions of the Comment.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science (CE170100026), the Australian Research Council Grants Scheme and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within SFB 689, project A9, and CRC 1277, project A02. The referees are thanked for their comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    John E. Sader

  2. School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    John E. Sader & Barry D. Hughes

  3. Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    Ferdinand Huber & Franz J. Giessibl

Authors
  1. John E. Sader
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  2. Barry D. Hughes
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  3. Ferdinand Huber
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  4. Franz J. Giessibl
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Contributions

J.E.S. supervised the project. F.H. and F.J.G. performed initial measurements on the Cu–Cu atomic system in which an anomaly between the matrix and Sader–Jarvis methods was observed. This was communicated to J.E.S. who explored with B.D.H. various theories to explain the anomaly. J.E.S. identified ill-posedness in the inverse problem, formulated the inflection point test and performed all calculations. F.H. and F.J.G. devised and performed further measurements using the Cu–CO system to validate the inflection point test. All authors analysed the data and contributed to the writing of the paper.

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Correspondence to John E. Sader.

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Sader, J.E., Hughes, B.D., Huber, F. et al. Interatomic force laws that evade dynamic measurement. Nature Nanotech 13, 1088–1091 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-018-0277-x

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