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Journal of Electron Microscopy Advance Access published online on February 15, 2007
Journal of Electron Microscopy, doi:10.1093/jmicro/dfm001
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Japanese Society of Microscopy. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Received November 30, 2006
Accepted January 9, 2007

Physical: letter

Calibration of the spring constant of AFM cantilever

G. Y. Jing 1, Jun. Ma 1, and D. P. Yu 1 *

1 State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
D. P. Yu, E-mail: yudp{at}pku.edu.cn


  Abstract

Several methods have been developed in recent years to calibrate the spring constant of atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilever. In the present work, an effective and practical improvement is made on these methods to provide a more convenient calibration method. Simplifying the originally tedious procedures by just examining the cantilever's dimensions in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the resonance frequency of the cantilever from Q curves in AFM system, the spring constants of different cantilevers are calculated by the methods of Cleveland and Sader. The results are close to the nominal values provided by the manufacturers, which indicates that simplifying the procedures is valid and reliable. Moreover, it shows that spring constants acquiring by Cleveland method is more close to their nominal values than Sader's method does.

Keywords: spring constant; resonance frequency; cantilever; calibration; Q curve; atomic force microscopy.
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