It’s your first day in the lab and your supervisor has been showing you around. They gesture over to a substantial piece of equipment and proudly announce ‘this is our AFM!’
Perhaps they started rolling through the different modes – contact AFM, non-contact AFM, tapping AFM – during which you nod sagely. Then suddenly out of nowhere they are talking about PFM, LFM, KPFM, SNOM… SNOM? you think. WTF is a SNOM?
During your break you search AFM and discover that AFM has multiple meanings:
You scroll through pages that reference the American Film Market, Accute Flaccid Myelitis, Asset Finance and Management, the Apostolic Faith Mission and Antiferromagnetic, because you thought your supervisor did mention something about magnetics…
You are just feeling like you need all the Advanced Fatigue Management you can get when your supervisors suggest you go for a drink. Okay, you think, yes, that’s what I need. However, once sat down, they start reminiscing about the early days of STM!
Take a breath. Do not worry. We have good news for you.
Yes, you have entered a field which is littered with TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) and FLAs (Four Letter Acronyms) but here’s your 3 minute guide to which ones you actually need to know.
Your 3 minute guide to the TLAs and FLAs you need to know
STM – Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy is the grandfather of AFM. It’s the original technique invented by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer at IBM, but is now a rather niche technique having been overtaken by the more user-friendly AFM.
SPM – Scanning Probe Microscopy is the overarching family name describing the method of having a physical probe interacting with the surface of a sample and scanning across the sample to build up an image. SPM is often used interchangeably with AFM (don’t get me started! To read more about interchangeable terms in AFM read our blog: A pedant’s (Christmas) guide to AFM probe terminology).
AFM – Atomic Force Microscopy is the technique that has found the most widespread appeal, primarily due to its versatility. Even basic AFM has several different modes (download our AFM Guide: Atomic force microscopy (AFM) for scientists for more detail), but more impressive is the list of (often subtly) different techniques that have emerged over the last 30 years – and yes, each of them has an acronym!
As you progress through your work and go into specific areas of research you may come across many other terms. For example, a wide range of electrical AFM modes have appeared, such as:
CAFM, conductive atomic force microscopy
EFM, electrostatic force microscopy
KPFM, kelvin probe force microscopy
PFM, piezoresponse force microscopy
SCM, scanning capacitance microscopy
There are a few others that are worth knowing about – such as MFM (Magnetic Force Microscopy) for imaging the magnetic properties of materials. Or you can measure frictional forces between the tip and sample using FFM (Fricton Force Microscopy), also referred to as LFM (Lateral Force Microscopy), just to confuse you!
Things get even more confusing. Take those name shifting acronyms such as SNOM (Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy), which is sometimes referred to as NSOM (Near-field Scanning Optical Microscopy).
Or the really sneaky TLAs that chuck a Five Letter Acronym inside them such as the innocent looking SSM, which actually stands for Scanning SQUID Microscopy, where SQUID refers to Superconducting Quantum Interference Device. Yes, that is actually a technique!
Enough said about TLAs for now. Hopefully we’ve shed a little light on them and they’ll make sense if you ever need to use them. The bigger challenge you may now face is getting familiar with using the AFM. Chances are Day 2 of your induction will have kicked off with your supervisor suggesting that you should just ‘have a play’ with the AFM.
It’s an expensive, complicated and sensitive piece of kit so understandably you may find this daunting. But relax. As odd as it sounds, playing with the AFM is the way to befriend it and we have just the blog to help you make a start with that: 5 top tips for effective AFM imaging: a beginner’s guide
If you need more advice, we’re happy to help! Contact us here
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