Explanation:
APPLICATION OF SPM
The invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in 1981 was met with both widespread skepticism and academic acclaim. Contemporary microscopists doubted the veracity of achieving atomic resolution due to then technological limitations and because imaging single atoms seemed to defy the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Within five years, the scientific community had witnessed STM experiments conducted in air, liquid, and ultra-high vacuum conditions (UHV). Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, the inventors of STM, were subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics and the field of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) was born.
Scanning probe microscopy is an advanced technique that uses physical probes to measure the surface qualities of a sample with extremely precise lateral and depth resolution. It is now one of the three primary divisions of microscopy—light, electron, and scanning probe—offering insights into not just the topographical features of samples, but alongside their mechanical, electrical, and functional properties.
This blog post will give an overview of the applications of scanning probe microscopy. It is by no means an exhaustive list, with numerous industries and fields of academic research still discovering the benefits of scanning probe microscopy.
