Scanning Probe Microscopy: Touching and Probing Matter at the Nanoscale

Initially developed for morphological imaging, scanning probe microscopy (SPM) has been used as a platform to develop different advanced techniques for the nanoscale characterization and mapping with nanometer lateral resolution of different physical (e.g., mechanical, electric, magnetic, optical…) properties. The development of these techniques has enabled amazing new possibilities in the field of nanocharacterization in terms of both the accessible parameters and materials. Indeed, SPM-based techniques allow the mapping of mechanical properties (e.g., elastic or viscoelastic moduli, hardness, friction coefficient, stiffness…) as well as electric (e.g., conductivity, work function, dielectric constast…), optical, thermal, or magnetic. Overall, these properties can be studied for a wide variety of materials, e.g., semiconductors, ceramics, as well as polymers, biological materials, cells and tissues. The workshop “Advanced Scanning Probe Microscopies” aims at presenting different SPM-based methods for the characterization of physical properties of materials at the nanoscale. In this keynote session, first the capability of SPM to characterize viscoelastic properties of materials is discussed in detail. Then some of the most recent developments in SPM methods for mechanical and electric characterizations at the nanoscale are illustrated.