Richard S. Gates

Laboratory notebooks have been a staple of scientific research for centuries for organizing and documenting ideas and experiments. Modern laboratories are increasingly reliant on electronic data collection and analysis, so it seems inevitable that the digital revolution should come to the ordinary laboratory notebook. The most important aspect of this transition is to make the shift as comfortable and intuitive as possible, so that the creative process that is the hallmark of scientific investigation and engineering achievement is maintained, and ideally enhanced. The smart electronic laboratory notebooks described in this paper represent a paradigm shift from the old pen and paper style notebooks and provide a host of powerful operational and documentation capabilities in an intuitive format that is available anywhere at any time.

Mode correction factors (MCFs) represent a significant adjustment to the spring constant values measured using the thermal cantilever calibration method. Usually, the ideal factor of 0.971 for a tipless rectangular cantilever is used, which adjusts the value by 3% for the first flexural mode. An experimental method for determining MCFs has been developed that relies on measuring the areas under the first few resonance peaks for the flexural mode type. Using this method, it has been shown that MCFs for the first flexural mode of commercially available atomic force microscope cantilevers actually vary from 0.95 to 1.0, depending on the shape and end mass of the cantilever. Triangular shaped cantilevers tend to lower MCFs with tipless versions providing the lowest values. Added masses (including tips) tend to increase the first flexural mode's MCF to higher values with large colloid probes at the high extreme. Using this understanding and applying it to the recently developed laser Doppler vibrometry thermal calibration method it is now possible to achieve very accurate and precise cantilever spring constant calibrations (uncertainties close to ±1%) with commonly available commercial cantilevers such as tipped rectangular and triangular cantilevers, and colloid probes.

Accurate cantilever spring constants are important in atomic force microscopy both in control of sensitive imaging and to provide correct nanomechanical property measurements. Conventional atomic force microscope (AFM) spring constant calibration techniques are usually performed in an AFM. They rely on significant handling and often require touching the cantilever probe tip to a surface to calibrate the optical lever sensitivity of the configuration. This can damage the tip. The thermal calibration technique developed for laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV) can be used to calibrate cantilevers without handling or touching the tip to a surface. Both flexural and torsional spring constants can be measured. Using both Euler-Bernoulli modeling and an SI traceable electrostatic force balance technique as a comparison we demonstrate that the LDV thermal technique is capable of providing rapid calibrations with a combination of ease, accuracy and precision beyond anything previously available.

The evolution of the atomic force microscope into a useful tool for measuring mechanical properties of surfaces at the nanoscale has spurred the need for more precise and accurate methods for calibrating the spring constants of test cantilevers. Groups within international standards organizations such as the International Organization for Standardization and the Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards (VAMAS) are conducting studies to determine which methods are best suited for these calibrations and to try to improve the reproducibility and accuracy of these measurements among different laboratories. This paper expands on a recent mini round robin within VAMAS Technical Working Area 29 to measure the spring constant of a single batch of triangular silicon nitride cantilevers sent to three international collaborators. Calibration techniques included reference cantilever, added mass, and two forms of thermal methods. Results are compared to measurements traceable to the International System of Units provided by an electrostatic force balance. A series of guidelines are also discussed for procedures that can improve the running of round robins in atomic force microscopy.