Quantitative Measurements of Electromechanical Response with a Metrological Atomic Force Microscope

An ongoing challenge in atomic force microscope (AFM) experiments is the quantitative measurement of cantilever motion. The vast majority of AFMs use the optical beam deflection (OBD) method to infer the deflection of the cantilever. The OBD method is easy to implement, has impressive noise performance and tends to be mechanically robust. However, it represents an indirect measurement of the cantilever displacement, since it is fundamentally an angular rather than a displacement measurement. Her...