Atomic Force Microscopy for Characterizing Nanocomposites

In 1959, the Nobel Laureate Professor Richard Feynman delivered the signal of “there is plenty of room at the bottom” at his lecture in Caltech (Feynman RP, There’s plenty of room at the bottom: an invitation to enter a new field of physics. First published in engineering and science magazine XXIII(5), 1960). He described the people’s perspectives to establish the capability for manipulating individual atoms and/or molecules. When stepping into this century, our society has been in high demand of miniature devices (Westervelt RM, Science 320:324–325, 2008; Madou MJ, Fundamentals of microfabrication and nanotechnology, Volume III: from MEMS to Bio-MEMS and Bio-NEMS: manufacturing techniques and applications. CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2011). With the scale down on critical dimensions of the devices, there will be a great deal of the beauty happening in mechanical, electrical, chemical, thermal, and optical domains (Cumings J, Zettl A, Science 289:602–604, 2000; Klinke C, Hannon JB, Afzali A, Avouris P, Nano Lett 6:906–910 2006; Lucas M, Zhang XH, Palaci I, Klinke C, Tosatti E, Riedo E, Nat Mater 8:876–881, 2009). As one most profound application within nanotechnology, nanocomposite has been indispensable in many segments of our society, spanning from packaging, automotive, medicine, energy harvesting and storage, and avionics (Youssef AM, Plast Technol Eng 52:635–660 2013; Maiti M, Bhattacharya M, Bhowmick AK, Rubber Chem Technol 81:384–469, 2008; Pushparaj VL, Shaijumon MM, Kumar A, Murugesan S, Ci LJ, Vajtai R, Linhardt RJ, Nalamasu O, Ajayan PM, PNAS 104:13574–13577, 2007) to name a few. In surveying design and characterization of nanocomposites, atomic force microscopy (AFM) as invented in 1986 by Binnig, Gerber, and Quate (Binnig G, Quate CF, Gerber C, Phys Rev Lett 56:930–933, 1986) is extremely important and has been quickly developed as a multifunctional tool to probe rich information on the surfaces related to mechanical, electrical, magnetic, chemical, and capacitive properties (Muller DJ, Dufrene YF, Nat Nanotechnol 3:261–269, 2008; Brennan B, Spencer SJ, Belsey NA, Faris T, Croninb H, Silva SRP, Sainsbury T, Gilmorea IS, Stoevab Z, Pollard AJ, Appl Surf Sci 403:403–412, 2017; Huang H, Dobryden I, Ihrner N, Johansson M, Ma HY, Pan JS, Claesson PM, J Colloid Interf Sci 494:204–214, 2017). This chapter is organized for providing a review on AFM imaging techniques being useful for studying nanocomposites and their relevance.