- Author
- Nguyen, T. | Gu, X. | VanLandingham, M. R. | Ryntz, R. | Nguyen, D. | Martin, J. W. | Nguyen, T.
- Title
- Nanoscale Chemical Imaging of Polymeric Materials With Atomic Force Microscopy.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD Visteon Corp., Dearborn, MI PPG Industries, Inc., Allison Park, PA
- Book or Conf
- Adhesion Fundamentals: From Moecules to Mechanisms and Modeling. Annual Meeting of the Adhesion Society, 26th. Proceedings. February 23-26, 2003, Myrtle Beack, SC, Koberstein, J. T.; Anderson, G. L., Editors, 508-510 p., 2003
- Keywords
- microscopy | degradation | coatings | atomic force microscopy | chemical heterogeneity | relative humidity | phase contrast | friction contrast
- Abstract
- Nanoscale spatial chemical information is essential to developing a molecular-level understanding of a variety of phenomena occurring at surfaces and interfaces, including adhesion, friction, and surface reactivity. Therefore, the ability to probe and image materials chemical heterogeneity with nanometer scale spatial resolution is sorely needed. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a powerful technique for characterizing surface morphology of materials with nanoscale resolution. However, the ability to identify and map the surface chemical heterogeneity has remained a challenge in the field of AFM. Chemical force microscopy (CFM), where the AFM probes are modified chemically, has been shown as a successful approach for enhancing the chemical sensitivity of model materials by AFM. However, this approach has not been experimented for real world and polymeric materials because the solvent medium used in the CFM technique to avoid the effect of the capillary forces can make irreversible changes on these chemically-complex materials. In this study, the application of a well-controlled humidity system is used to enhance the sensitivity of AFM in characterizing surface chemical heterogeneity of polymeric materials. The relative humidity (RH) of the tip-sample environment is controlled using a humidity generator and a novel small-volume environmental chamber. The relative humidity in the chamber can be controlled from nearly 0% RH up to 95% RH.