Scanning local‐acceleration microscopy

By adapting a scanning force microscope to operate at frequencies above the highest tip–sample resonance, the sensitivity of the microscope to materials’ properties is greatly enhanced. The cantilever’s behavior in response to high‐frequency excitation from a transducer underneath the sample is fundamentally different than to its low‐frequency response. In this article, the motivations, instrumentation, theory, and first results for this technique are described.