Atomic Force Microscopy of Polymers

In this chapter, the authors discuss their present understanding regarding tapping phase contrast mechanism in polymers and the enhancements of tapping phase, force modulation, and pulsed force mode atomic force microscopy (AFM). They discuss the recent innovations, developments, and applications of several AFM methods on polymers, including force–volume AFM, peak force AFM, multifrequency dynamic AFM, and quantitative nanomechanical measurements based on contact resonance. The emphasis is on qualitative and quantitative mapping of polymer morphologies based on nanomechanical contrast. Tapping phase AFM was found to be very useful for multicomponent polymer systems that do not exhibit strong density contrast in electron microscopy, such as polyolefin blends, elastomer blends and compounds, and semicrystalline polymers. All methods discussed here, including force modulation, pulsed force, peak force, and force–volume AFM, involve force measurements.