This book presents the physical and technical foundation of the state of the art in applied scanning probe techniques. It constitutes a timely and comprehensive overview of SPM applications. The chapters in this volume relate to scanning probe microscopy techniques, characterization of various materials and structures and typical industrial applications, including topographic and dynamical surface studies of thin-film semiconductors, polymers, paper, ceramics, and magnetic and biological materials. The chapters are written by leading researchers and application scientists from all over the world and from various industries to provide a broader perspective.

This book presents the physical and technical foundation of the state of the art in applied scanning probe techniques. It constitutes a timely and comprehensive overview of SPM applications. The chapters in this volume relate to scanning probe microscopy techniques, characterization of various materials and structures and typical industrial applications, including topographic and dynamical surface studies of thin-film semiconductors, polymers, paper, ceramics, and magnetic and biological materials. The chapters are written by leading researchers and application scientists from all over the world and from various industries to provide a broader perspective.

This book presents the physical and technical foundation of the state-of-the-art in applied scanning probe techniques. It constitutes a comprehensive overview of SPM applications. The chapters are written by leading researchers and application scientists.

This book explains the operating principles of atomic force microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. The aim of this book is to enable the reader to operate a scanning probe microscope successfully and understand the data obtained with the microscope. The chapters on the scanning probe techniques are complemented by the chapters on fundamentals and important technical aspects. This textbook is primarily aimed at graduate students from physics, materials science, chemistry, nanoscience and engineering, as well as researchers new to the field.

How networked structures of collaboration and competition within a community of researchers led to the invention, spread, and commercialization of scanning probe microscopy. The scanning tunneling microscope (STM) has been hailed as the “key enabling discovery for nanotechnology,” the catalyst for a scientific field that attracts nearly $20 billion in funding each year. In Instrumental Community, Cyrus Mody argues that this technology-centric view does not explain how these microscopes helped to launch nanotechnology—and fails to acknowledge the agency of the microscopists in making the STM and its variants critically important tools. Mody tells the story of the invention, spread, and commercialization of scanning probe microscopy in terms of the networked structures of collaboration and competition that came into being within a diverse, colorful, and sometimes fractious community of researchers. By forming a community, he argues, these researchers were able to innovate rapidly, share the microscopes with a wide range of users, and generate prestige (including the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics) and profit (as the technology found applications in industry). Mody shows that both the technology of probe microscopy and the community model offered by the probe microscopists contributed to the development of political and scientific support for nanotechnology and the global funding initiatives that followed. In the course of his account, Mody charts the shifts in U.S. science policy over the last forty years—from the decline in federal basic research funding in the 1970s through the rise in academic patenting in the 1980s to the emergence of nanotechnology discourse in the 1990s—that have resulted in today's increasing emphasis on the commercialization of academic research.

Efficiency and life time of solar cells, energy and power density of the batteries, and costs of the fuel cells alike cannot be improved unless the complex electronic, optoelectronic, and ionic mechanisms underpinning operation of these materials and devices are understood on the nanometer level of individual defects. Only by probing these phenomena locally can we hope to link materials structure and functionality, thus opening pathway for predictive modeling and synthesis. While structures of these materials are now accessible on length scales from macroscopic to atomic, their functionality has remained Terra Incognitae. In this volume, we provide a summary of recent advances in scanning probe microscopy studies of local functionality of energy materials and devices ranging from photovoltaics to batteries, fuel cells, and energy harvesting systems. Recently emergent SPM modes and combined SPM-electron microscopy approaches are also discussed. Contributions by internationally renowned leaders in the field describe the frontiers in this important field.

Scanning tunneling microscopy has achieved remarkable progress and become the key technology for surface science. This book predicts the future development for all of scanning probe microscopy (SPM). Such forecasts may help to determine the course ultimately taken and may accelerate research and development on nanotechnology and nanoscience, as well as all in SPM-related fields in the future.