Nonlinear dynamic analysis of atomic force microscopy under deterministic and random excitation

The atomic force microscope (AFM) system has evolved into a useful tool for direct measurements of intermolecular forces with atomic-resolution characterization that can be employed in a broad spectrum of applications. This paper is devoted to the analysis of nonlinear behavior of amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM) modes of atomic force microscopy. For this, the microcantilever (which forms the basis for the operation of AFM) is modeled as a single mode approximation and the interaction between the sample and cantilever is derived from a van der Waals potential. Using perturbation methods such as averaging, and Fourier transform nonlinear equations of motion are analytically solved and the advantageous results are extracted from this nonlinear analysis. The results of the proposed techniques for AM-AFM, clearly depict the existence of two stable and one unstable (saddle) solutions for some of exciting parameters under deterministic vibration. The basin of attraction of two stable solutions is different and dependent on the exciting frequency. From this analysis the range of the frequency which will result in a unique periodic response can be obtained and used in practical experiments. Furthermore the analytical responses determined by perturbation techniques can be used to detect the parameter region where the chaotic motion is avoided. On the other hand for FM-AFM, the relation between frequency shift and the system parameters can be extracted and used for investigation of the system nonlinear behavior. The nonlinear behavior of the oscillating tip can easily explain the observed shift of frequency as a function of tip sample distance. Also in this paper we have investigated the AM-AFM system response under a random excitation. Using two different methods we have obtained the statistical properties of the tip motion. The results show that we can use the mean square value of tip motion to image the sample when the excitation signal is random.