Atomic force microscopy—a powerful tool for industrial applications

✍ Scribed by Karbach, A.; Drechsler, D.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 997 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0142-2421
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-9918(199905/06)27:5/6<401::aid-sia533>3.0.co;2-a

✦ Synopsis

The phenomenal success of atomic force microscopy (AFM) in industry is based on the easy access of samples with practical interest due to the high resolution and high contrast of the method under controllable ambient conditions. In our case, the high resolution of AFM is mainly used in the mesoscale range. The high contrast using tapping mode AFM provides information for understanding morphological features of soft organic material such as polymers and coatings and also for hard metallic and ceramic systems. But for correlation of the observed morphology with chemical species the combined use to AFM and transmission electron microscopy often is necessary. As an example elucidation of the morphology of thermoplastic polyurethane will be discussed in more detail.