Noncontact Atomic Force Microscopy - Yale School of Engineering ...

Welcome
Dear conference participant:
Welcome to the 12th International Conference on Non-Contact Atomic Force Microscopy
(NC-AFM 2009), which is held on historic Yale University campus in New Haven, CT, USA.
It continues a series of international conferences constituted 1998 in Osaka, Japan. Since
then, the annual NC-AFM conferences have been established as the leading events for
NC-AFM related topics. This year’s meeting has again attracted a large number of
participants (over 130 attendees from 17 countries), who are contributing 43 oral and 71
poster presentations. 15 additional talks are provided by the Satellite Workshop on Casimir
Forces and Their Measurement, and seven companies feature their newest products in an
exhibition.
Like in other years, the scientific program showcases the rapid development that NC-AFM
enjoys. Various experimental improvements such as high-stability measurements
performed at low temperatures, novel stiff self-sensing oscillators with atomically controlled
tips that allow chemical identification and tunneling current collection, drift compensation by
forward-feedbacking, atom tracking, and post-acquisition drift correction, and all-digital
high-speed, low-noise electronics enable a new level of sophistication in imaging, analysis,
and atom manipulation. Progress is particularly remarkable for high-resolution data
acquisition in liquids, demonstrating that NC-AFM is leaving its ultrahigh vacuum niche.
The main conference is complemented by a Satellite Workshop on Casimir Forces and
Their Measurement (Casimir 2009). Designed to stimulate discussion between the Casimir
and the NC-AFM communities, the Casimir 2009 workshop has been well received (87
participants). Credit for initiating this event goes to Woo-Joong Kim, who was aided in its
organization by Alex Sushkov and Steven K. Lamoreaux.
Contributions by many key players were indispensable in realizing this conference, among
them the ones by the members of the Local Organizing Committee (Eric I. Altman, Hong X.
Tang, and Woo-Joong Kim) and by the team of the Yale Conference Service under the
supervision of Susan Adler. Special thanks go to Mehmet Baykara for his help with various
practical aspects such as the design of this abstract booklet. We were also fortunate to
receive significant support from numerous Yale entities, whose generous financial
assistance made this conference possible, from the European Science Foundation through
its “New Trends and Applications of the Casimir Effect” program, and from the American
Vacuum Society, which arranged for the publication of the conference proceedings. The
complete list of institutional sponsors can be found opposite to this page; corporative
sponsors and exhibitors are listed on page 9.
We hope that you will enjoy the conference and have a wonderful time in New Haven.
Udo D. Schwarz, Conference Chair
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