Interfacial Force Microscope

The IFM (Joyce and Houston) is based on a unique self-balancing capacitance force sensor. The IFM (Joyce and Houston) incorporates force-feedback control to rebalance the sensor thus eliminating the instability encountered in traditional atomic force microscopes. The result is that the probe can be brought into near contact and through contact, providing unambiguous measurements of the attractive and contact forces through this entire range of interrogation.

The current state-of-the-art IFM is capable of measuring normal forces over the range of 1 nano-Newton to 400 micro-Newtons, measuring lateral forces from 2 nano-Newton to 50 micro-Newton, and imaging with 100 angstrom resolution. The feedback response time is approximately 500 microseconds.

S.A. Joyce and J.E. Houston, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 62(3)710(1991).

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