Importance of atomic force microscopy settings for measuring the diameter of carbon nanotubes

Sammanfattning: Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have gathered a lot of interest because of their extraordinary mechanical, electrical and thermal properties and have potential applications in a wide variety of areas such as material-reinforcement and nano-electronics. The properties of nanotubes are dependent on their diameter and methods for determining this using atomic force microscopy (AFM) in tapping mode assume that the measured height of the tubes represent the real diameter. Based on early, faulty calculations, the forces in tapping mode were assumed to be much lower than in contact mode, however it was later shown that forces in tapping mode can at point of impact rival the forces present in contact mode. This means that there is a potential risk of tube deformation during tapping mode measurements, resulting in incorrectly determined diameters. This work studies CNTs deposited on a silicon-substrate to analyze the effect of three common AFM settings (tapping frequency, free oscillation amplitude and setpoint) to determine their effect on measured CNT diameters and recommendations for choosing settings are given.