Introduction
The atomic force microscope is ideal for quantitatively measuring the nanometer scale surface roughness and for visualizing the surface nano-texture on many types of material surfaces. Advantages of the AFM for such applications are derived from the fact that the AFM is nondestructive and it has a very high three dimensional spatial resolution.  Figure 1: This contact mode AFM image shows the grains at the surface of a metal bonding pad. The image size is 1.79 × 1.79 microns and the maximum height of a feature in the image is 29.2 nanometers. Measuring the surface texture of samples with horizontal length scale of less than 10 microns and a vertical length scale of 100 nanometers is critical for many areas of science and technology. For example, surface texture can alter the optical properties of materials, control adhesive properties of polymers, affect the yield of processed silicon wafers, and control the density of stored magnetic materials.
|
