Piezoelectric measurements with atomic force microscopy

An atomic force microscope (AFM) is used to measure the magnitude of the effective longitudinal piezoelectric constant (d33) of thin films. Measurements are performed with a conducting diamond AFM tip in contact with a top electrode. The interaction between the tip and electric field present is a potentially large source of error that is eliminated through the use of this configuration and the conducting diamond tips. Measurements yielded reasonable piezoelectric constants of X-cut single-crystal quartz, thin film ZnO, and nonpiezoelectric SiO2 thin films.