Modeling of cylindrically tapered cantilevers for transverse dynamic forcemicroscopy (TDFM)

In transverse dynamic force microscopy a cylindrically tapered cantilever i s mounted perpendicularly to the sample surface and set into transversal os cillation. The dynamics of the cantilever has been studied using the contin uum mechanical model with discrete element analysis. A viscoelastic model h as been used to describe the tip-sample interaction. In this way an in-phas e and an out-of-phase component of the force has been extracted from the ex perimental data. Two different techniques, involving two experimental setup s and two corresponding data analysis routines, have been developed to calc ulate the two components of the force at different tip-sample separations. In one case the change in resonant frequency and corresponding oscillation amplitude is measured whereas in the second case the usual way of recording amplitude and phase signal at a fixed driving frequency is applied. The re sults from these two methods are shown to be completely consistent and prod uce almost identical force curves. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All right s reserved.