Research progress on the calibration methods for elastic constant of atomic force microscopy cantilevers

It’s vital to know exactly the elastic constant of the cantilever of an atomic force microscope before the mechanical properties of material surfaces are quantitatively characterized with this device. This paper has reviewed corresponding calibration methods used in recent years, comprising dimensional method,static deflection and dynamic deflection. The dimensional method is designed for expounding different cantilever shapes (mostly rectangular and V-shaped), the mathematical models and their advantages and disadvantages of different methods will be analyzed in this paper. The static deflection is used to explain the mathematical models and the study on the accuracy improvement of these methods particularly. The dynamic deflection is reviewed separately with three approaches namely added mass method,Sader method and thermal tuning method. The model characteristics and advancement of the three methods are compared here. In the end, several suitable calibrations also be discussed for common cantilevers; the research prospect of these calibration methods are proposed.

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