Atomic force acoustic microscopy: Influence of the lateral contact stiffness on the elastic measurements

• Elastic properties of surfaces by atomic force acoustic microscopy.
• Influence of the lateral contact stiffness on the elastic measurements.
• Regions on the flexural vibration curves independent of the kS/kN ratio.
• Experimental study and finite element analysis of the dynamic behavior of AFM probes.
• This analysis reduces uncertainties in the measurements of elastic properties.

Atomic force acoustic microscopy is a dynamic technique where the resonances of a cantilever, that has its tip in contact with the sample, are used to quantify local elastic properties of surfaces. Since the contact resonance frequencies (CRFs) monotonically increase with the tip-sample contact stiffness, they are used to evaluate the local elastic properties of the surfaces through a suitable contact mechanical model. The CRFs depends on both, normal and lateral contact stiffness, kN and kS respectively, where the last one is taken either as constant (kS < 1), or as zero, leading to uncertainty in the estimation of the elastic properties of composite materials. In this work, resonance spectra for free and contact vibration were used in a finite element analysis of cantilevers to show the influence of kS in the resonance curves due to changes in the kS/kN ratio. These curves have regions for the different vibrational modes that are both, strongly and weakly dependent on kS, and they can be used in a selective manner to obtain a precise mapping of elastic properties.