8th Liquid Matter Conference September 6-10, 2011 Wien, Austria ...

P7.98Thu 811:10-14:00Simulating atomic force microscopy in waterBernhard Reischl 1 and Adam S. Foster 21 Department of Physics, Tampere University of Technology, P. O. Box 692, 33101,Tampere, Finland2 Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University School of Science, Aalto, FinlandAlthough recent atomically resolved non-contact AFM images of calcite in water [1] resemblethose obtained in UHV [2], the imaging mechanism in liquid is more complicated [3]. The presenceof hydration layers around the tip and surface leads to entropic contributions to the forceacting on the AFM tip. We use molecular dynamics simulations and free energy calculations tocompute force-distance curves for different AFM tip apex models, and compare them with experimentalAFM images.[1] S. Rode et al., Langmuir 25, 2850 (2009).[2] J. Schütte et al., Langmuir 26, 8295 (2010).[3] M. Watkins and A. L. Shluger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 196101 (2010).98