A NANOSENSORS™ self-sensing self-activating Akiyama probe was used in a home-built Scanning Probe Microscope for this interesting research article.

*Florian Lauraux, Sarah Yehya, Stéphane Labat, Jean‐Sébastien Micha, Odile Robach, Oleg Kovalenko, Eugen Rabkin, Olivier Thomas, Thomas W. Cornelius
In‐situ force measurement during nano‐indentation combined with Laue microdiffraction
Nano Select , Volume2, Issue1, January 2021, Pages 99-106
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/nano.202000073

Please have a look at the abstract below or follow the external link above to read the full article.

Abstract:

“For the characterization of the mechanical properties of materials the precise measurements of stress‐strain curves is indispensable. In situ nano‐mechanical testing setups, however, may lack the precision either in terms of strain or stress determination. Recently, the custom‐built scanning force microscope SFINX was developed which is compatible with third‐generation synchrotron end‐stations allowing for in situ nano‐mechanical tests in combination with nanofocused synchrotron x‐ray diffraction that is highly sensitive to strain and defects. The usage of a self‐actuating and self‐sensing cantilever tremendously increases the compactness of the system but lacks deflection sensitivity and, thus the force measurement. This deficiency is resolved by in situ monitoring the diffraction peaks of the Si cantilever by Laue microdiffraction during the nano‐indentation of a gold crystal. The orientation and, hence, the deflection of the Si cantilever is deduced from the displacement of the Si Laue spots on the detector giving force accuracies of better than 90 nN. At the same time, the dislocation density in the indented Au crystal is tracked by monitoring the Au Laue spots eventually resulting in complete stress‐dislocation density curves.”*

Open Access: The article “In‐situ force measurement during nano‐indentation combined with Laue microdiffraction” by Florian Lauraux, Sarah Yehya, Stéphane Labat, Jean‐Sébastien Micha, Odile Robach, Oleg Kovalenko, Eugen Rabkin, Olivier Thomas, Thomas W. Cornelius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Nanoscale investigations by scanning probe microscopy have provided major contributions to the rapid development of organic–inorganic halide perovskites (OIHP) as optoelectronic devices. Further improvement of device level properties requires a deeper understanding of the performance-limiting mechanisms such as ion migration, phase segregation, and their effects on charge extraction both at the nano- and macroscale.*

In the article “Nanoscale Charge Accumulation and Its Effect on Carrier Dynamics in Tri-cation Perovskite Structures” David Toth, Bekele Hailegnaw, Filipe Richheimer, Fernando A. Castro, Ferry Kienberger, Markus C. Scharber, Sebastian Wood and Georg Gramse describe how they studied the dynamic electrical response of Cs0.05(FA0.83MA0.17)0.95PbI3–xBrx perovskite structures by employing conventional and microsecond time-resolved open-loop Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM).*

Their results indicate strong negative charge carrier trapping upon illumination and very slow (>1 s) relaxation of charges at the grain boundaries. The fast electronic recombination and transport dynamics on the microsecond scale probed by time-resolved open-loop KPFM show diffusion of charge carriers toward grain boundaries and indicate locally higher recombination rates because of intrinsic compositional heterogeneity. The nanoscale electrostatic effects revealed are summarized in a collective model for mixed-halide CsFAMA. Results on multilayer solar cell structures draw direct relations between nanoscale ionic transport, charge accumulation, recombination properties, and the final device performance.*

The author’s findings extend the current understanding of complex charge carrier dynamics in stable multication OIHP structures.*

NANOSENSORS™ Platinum Silicide AFM Probes of the PtSi-CONT type (nominal resonance frequency 13 kHz, nominal force constant 0.2 N/m) were used for the measurements described in the research article cited above. *

*David Toth, Bekele Hailegnaw, Filipe Richheimer, Fernando A. Castro, Ferry Kienberger, Markus C. Scharber, Sebastian Wood and Georg Gramse
Nanoscale Charge Accumulation and Its Effect on Carrier Dynamics in Tri-cation Perovskite Structures
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2020, 12, 42, 48057–48066
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.0c10641

Please follow this external link to read the full article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.0c10641

Open Access The article “Nanoscale Charge Accumulation and Its Effect on Carrier Dynamics in Tri-cation Perovskite Structures” by David Toth, Bekele Hailegnaw, Filipe Richheimer, Fernando A. Castro, Ferry Kienberger, Markus C. Scharber, Sebastian Wood and Georg Gramse is licensed under a ACS AuthorChoice  – Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Further permissions related to the material excerpted above should be directed to the ACS .

In the article “Multi-Channel Exploration of O Adatom on TiO2(110) Surface by Scanning Probe Microscopy” Huan Fei Wen, Yasuhiro Sugawara and Yan Jun describe how they studied the O2 dissociated state under the different O2 exposed temperatures with atomic resolution by scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and imaged the O adatom by simultaneous atomic force microscopy (AFM)/scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).*

The effect of AFM operation mode on O adatom contrast was investigated, and the interaction of O adatom and the subsurface defect was observed by AFM/STM. Multi-channel exploration was performed to investigate the charge transfer between the adsorbed O and the TiO2(110) by obtaining the frequency shift, tunneling current and local contact potential difference at an atomic scale. The tunneling current image showed the difference of the tunneling possibility on the single O adatom and paired O adatoms, and the local contact potential difference distribution of the O-TiO2(110) surface institutively revealed the charge transfer from TiO2(110) surface to O adatom. The experimental results are expected to be helpful in investigating surface/interface properties by SPM. *

Iridium-coated ultrastiff AFM cantilever SD-T10L100 from the NANOSENSORS Special Developments List (typical Force constant 2 000 N/m) were used in the presented study.

The cantilever tip was first degassed at approximately 650 K for 30 min and then cleaned by Ar ion bombardment to remove the contaminants, prior to the measurements. Features of the surface structure were related to the charge states of the tip apex, and a stable tip was essential to accurately characterize the surface structure and properties in the experiment. The imaging mode became stable in AFM experiments when the metal-coated Si cantilever was employed in the experiments. *

*Huan Fei Wen, Yasuhiro Sugawara and Yan Jun
Multi-Channel Exploration of O Adatom on TiO2(110) Surface by Scanning Probe Microscopy
Nanomaterials 2020, 10(8), 1506
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/nano10081506

Please follow this external link to read the full article: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-4991/10/8/1506/htm

More articles mentioning the use of NANOSENSORS ultrastiff AFM probes:

Yuuki Adachi, Huan Fei Wen, Quanzhen Zhang, Masato Miyazaki, Yasuhiro Sugawara and Yan Jun Li
Elucidating the charge state of an Au nanocluster on the oxidized/reduced rutile TiO2 (110) surface using non-contact atomic force microscopy and Kelvin probe force microscopy
Nanoscale Adv., 2020, 2, 2371-2375 (Paper)
DOI: 10.1039/C9NA00776H
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2020/na/c9na00776h

Huan Fei Wen, Hongqian Sang Yasuhiro Sugawara, and Yan Jun Li
Dynamic behavior of OH and its atomic contrast with O adatom on the Ti site of TiO2(110) at 78 K by atomic force microscopy imaging
Appl. Phys. Lett. 117, 051602 (2020)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0016657

Yuuki Adachi, Yasuhiro Sugawara, and Yan Jun Li
Remotely Controlling the Charge State of Oxygen Adatoms on a Rutile TiO2(110) Surface Using Atomic Force Microscopy
J. Phys. Chem. C 2020, 124, 22, 12010–12015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.0c03117

Huan Fei Wen, Quanzhen Zhang, Yuuki Adachi, Masato Miyazaki, Yasuhiro Sugawara, Yan JunLi
Contrast inversion of O adatom on rutile TiO2(1 1 0)-(1 × 1) surface by atomic force microscopy imaging
Applied Surface Science Volume 505, 1 March 2020, 144623
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2019.144623

Open Access The article “Multi-Channel Exploration of O Adatom on TiO2(110) Surface by Scanning Probe Microscopy” by Huan Fei Wen, Yasuhiro Sugawara and Yan Jun is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.