Lateral force microscopy in low normal force limit

We have studied frictional force between SiN tip and Si surface by using lateral force microscopy. The cantilever we have used has very low stiffness of 0.006 N/m, and the normal force acting on the surface was much lower than the attractive force such as van der Waals force. In this low normal force limit, it was found that the frictional force did not depend on the normal force. We suggest a calibration method to estimate the attractive force from the lateral force data in this limit. The estimated attractive force between Si sample and SiN tip with radius of 10 nm was 0.4 nN in flat region and 0.65 nN at the corner of a rectangular hole.