Intermittent contact AFM using the higher modes of weak cantilever

Employing the higher vibration modes of weak cantilevers enables operating frequencies up to megahertz to be reached, at the same time keeping the force on the sample reasonably low. This allows the interaction time between the tip and the surface to be reduced and should cause the response of surface to be dominated by surface stiffness. The simple distributed mass cantilever model is presented which shows that higher eigenmodes exhibit better sensitivity to surface properties. The images of laser-treated polymer on glass show the ability of the method to distinguish between the material phases with different properties.