Probing Dielectric Constant at the Nanoscale with Scanning Probe Microscopy

Dielectric polarization, represented by the dielectric constant is an intrinsic property of matter that plays a fundamental role in many fields of research, from materials science and technology to chemistry and biology. With the invention of scanning probe microscopy in the 1980s, many scanning probes microscopes have been developed to access electrical properties of solids and liquids at the nanoscale simultaneously to structural properties. This chapter presents the theoretical framework and calibration procedure of the probe geometry that implemented to interpret the data. Measurement of dielectric properties at the nanoscale by using a scanning probe has shown great progress. In particular, various approaches have been established based on current sensing and electrostatic force sensing. They enable to precisely quantify the dielectric constant of materials and biological samples with high precision and with nanoscale spatial resolution—below 10–50 nm, depending on the approach used and the sample size.