Magnetic resonance force microscopy combined with surface topography

A new method of surface microscopy is proposed, which combines three-dimensional electron spin resonance imaging by magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM) and topographic imaging of the sample surface by scanning force microscopy (SFM). In order to demonstrate its potential for the identification of microscale objects, the individual and combined images are used to provide the locations, shapes and spin density distributions of target phantom objects. We report spatial resolution in MRFM of 2.8 × 2.8 × 2.0μm3. This could be improved to the theoretical limit of 0.08 × 0.08 × 0.04μm3 through reduction of the thermal noise by cooling to cryogenic temperatures ∼0.5 K. We believe that this type of microscopy will become a very useful tool for the investigation of anomalies induced in surfaces by materials buried below the surface.