Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2022) 137: 72
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02283-1

Regular Article

Vibrational behavior of atomic force microscope beam via different polymers and immersion environments

Renewable Energy Research Center, Damavand Branch, Islamic Azad University, Damavand, Iran

^b a_sadeghi@damavandiau.ac.ir

Received: 21 June 2021
Accepted: 9 December 2021
Published online: 29 December 2021

Abstract

This paper investigates the dynamic behavior of a V-shaped atomic force microscope (AFM) beam using different polymers and immersion environments. Polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP), polycarbonate (PC), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), and high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) polymers have been used as the polymeric samples. Based on the importance and applications of these polymers in micro- and nanotechnology, it is necessary to find the mechanical properties in nanoscale. Considering these samples for AFM beam as new research can be interesting. Nanoindentation for extension and retraction regimes has been done by NT-MDT SOLVER P47 scanning probe microscope. For calibration of computing in nanoscale, polyethylene and EPDM rubber have been applied. For the mathematical modeling of the dynamic behavior of the V-shaped AFM beam, Timoshenko beam theory has been applied, and for modeling the contact between beam and samples, DMT (Derjaguin–Muller–Toporov) contact theory has been used to consider the adhesion due to a soft sample. Air, water, methanol, and acetone have been considered as beam environments. Finite element modeling (FEM) has been used to obtain the frequency response function (FRF) and resonant frequency of the beam. Mathematica software (version 8) has been used for programming equations in FEM. The results show that increasing the elasticity modules of the samples increases the resonant frequency, but the amplitude of FRF of vertical movement of the beam declines. By increasing the liquid viscosity as the immersion environments, the resonant frequency amplitude of FRF of vertical movement of the beam decreases. The results of theoretical modeling have been compared with the experimental method (by JPK Instruments-Nano Wizard 2 Atomic Force Microscope). The results show agreement.