Asylum Research, a specialist in scanning probe and atomic force microscopy (SPM/AFM), has launched a grant programme for early adopters to explore the uses of the Band Excitation (BE) technique.
Existing or new Asylum AFM users can apply for grants valued at up to USD50,000 (GBP30,000).
According to Roger Proksch, Asylum Research president and grants lead, the BE technique maps the conservative interactions, non-linearities and energy dissipation of materials on the nanoscale.
He said: 'Stephen Jesse and Sergei Kalinin at Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL], collaborating with Asylum Research, have developed the BE system, where a synthesised excitation signal probes the response of a cantilever at multiple frequencies simultaneously.
'This method is a fast and sensitive technique that may be useful for understanding and mitigating energy losses in magnetic, electrical and electromechanical processes and technologies,' added Proksch.
Suggested grant topics include: energy dissipation in materials; contact resonance measurements for materials properties contrast and quantification; the electromechanical properties of materials, including piezoelectrics and ferroelectrics; applications of BE to solar materials, such as photovoltaics and energetic materials; BE methodologies applied to other active probes, such as localised thermal analysis; biological materials including mechanical properties and recognition mechanisms; advanced methodologies for data reduction and analysis; probing non-linear tip-sample interactions; and other nanoscale measurements that can benefit from rapid multiple frequency measurements.
Kalinin said: 'Classical scanning probe microscopies are based on the excitation and detection of single or, recently, dual frequencies.
'In doing so, the information on real tip-surface interactions manifested in the fine details of the resonance curve shape is not measured.
'Implementation of BE on multiple ambient and UHV systems at ORNL has allowed us to achieve several technical breakthroughs in mapping structure, magnetic and electrical dissipation and electromechanical activity in ferroelectric, multi-ferroic and biological systems in ambient, liquid and vacuum environments,' he added.
Jesse said: 'Classical SPM offers basically a greyscale image of cantilever dynamics at a single frequency.
'BE opens a new and colourful multi-frequency view of the nanoworld that we can already explore, but are just starting to appreciate,' he added.
