G Gramse et al 2009 Nanotechnology 20 395702 doi:10.1088/0957-4484/20/39/395702
G Gramse1, I Casuso2, J Toset1, L Fumagalli1 and G Gomila1
Show affiliationsA simple method to measure the static dielectric constant of thin films with nanometric spatial resolution is presented. The dielectric constant is extracted from DC electrostatic force measurements with the use of an accurate analytical model. The method is validated here on thin silicon dioxide films (8 nm thick, dielectric constant~4) and purple membrane monolayers (6 nm thick, dielectric constant~2), providing results in excellent agreement with those recently obtained by nanoscale capacitance microscopy using a current-sensing approach. The main advantage of the force detection approach resides in its simplicity and direct application on any commercial atomic force microscope with no need of additional sophisticated electronics, thus being easily available to researchers in materials science, biophysics and semiconductor technology.
77.22.Ch Permittivity (dielectric function)
61.46.-w Structure of nanoscale materials
Condensed matter: electrical, magnetic and optical
Issue 39 (30 September 2009)
Received 4 June 2009, in final form 20 July 2009
Published 2 September 2009
G Gramse et al 2009 Nanotechnology 20 395702
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