Characterization of Surface Energetic Behavior by Atomic Force Microscopy

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Inorganic solid surfaces which have various surface free energies, 30∼65 dyn/cm, were probed using a Si 3 N 4 cantilever tip. It was found that the attractive force (∼10 -7 N), which is generated when a cantilever tip moves away from a solid surface after making contact, is more sensitive to the behavior of surface free energy than that (∼10 -9 N) which is generated when the tip moves toward the surface. The relationship between the elastic potential energy of the cantilever and the adhesion energy of the tip-surface system is also discussed.