We demonstrate an alternative to Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy for imaging surface potential. The open-loop, single-pass technique applies a low-frequency AC voltage to the atomic force microscopy tip while driving the cantilever near its resonance frequency. Frequency mixing due to the nonlinear capacitance gives intermodulation products of the two drive frequencies near the cantilever resonance, where they are measured with high signal to noise ratio. Analysis of this intermodulation response allows for quantitative reconstruction of the contact potential difference. We derive the theory of the method, validate it with numerical simulation and a control experiment, and we demonstrate its utility for fast imaging of the surface photo-voltage on an organic photovoltaic material.

The interface between two wide band-gap insulators, LaAlO3 and SrTiO3 (LAO/STO) offers a unique playground to study the interplay and competitions between different ordering phenomena in a strongly correlated two- dimensional electron gas. Recent studies of the LAO/STO interface reveal the inhomogeneous nature of the 2DEG that strongly influences electrical-transport properties. Nanowires needed in future applications may be adversely affected, and our aim is, thus, to produce a more homogeneous electron gas. In this work, we demonstrate that nanostructures fabricated in the quasi-2DEG at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface, capped with a SrCuO2 layer, retain their electrical resistivity and mobility independent of the structure size, ranging from 100 nm to 30 mu m. This is in contrast to noncapped LAO/STO structures, where the room-temperature electrical resistivity significantly increases when the structure size becomes smaller than 1 mu m. High-resolution intermodulation electrostatic force microscopy reveals an inhomogeneous surface potential with "puddles" of a characteristic size of 130 nm in the noncapped samples and a more uniform surface potential with a larger characteristic size of the puddles in the capped samples. In addition, capped structures show superconductivity below 200 mK and nonlinear currentvoltage characteristics with a clear critical current observed up to 700 mK. Our findings shed light on the complicated nature of the 2DEG at the LAO/STO interface and may also be used for the design of electronic devices.

We use a recently developed scanning probe technique to image with high spatial resolution the injection and extraction of charge around individual surface-modified aluminum oxide nanoparticles embedded in a low-density polyethylene (LDPE) matrix. We find that the experimental results are consistent with a simple band structure model where localized electronic states are available in the band gap (trap states) in the vicinity of the nanoparticles. This work offers experimental support to a previously proposed mechanism for enhanced insulating properties of nanocomposite LDPE and provides a powerful experimental tool to further investigate such properties.

Background forces are linear long-range interactions of the cantilever body with its surroundings that must be compensated for in order to reveal tip-surface force, the quantity of interest for determining material properties in atomic force microscopy. We provide a mathematical derivation of a method to compensate for background forces, apply it to experimental data, and discuss how to include background forces in simulation. Our method, based on linear-response theory in the frequency domain, provides a general way of measuring and compensating for any background force and it can be readily applied to different force reconstruction methods in dynamic AFM.

A key parameter to improve the performance of organic solar cells is the optimization of electronic phenomena at donor-acceptor interfaces through the optimization of the morphology of the bulk heterojunction. The correlative mapping of morphological, electrical and mechanical properties at the nanoscale by advanced scanning probe microscopy techniques allows for a detailed characterization of the local structure-property relationships in bulk heterojunctions solar cells. Unique opportunities for the investigation of these photoactive films are shown here, ultimately suggesting fundamental guidelines toward the accurate engineering of these materials at the nanoscale.

Low noise measurement of small currents in nanometer-scale junctions is of central importance to the characterization of novel high-performance devices and materials for applications ranging from energy harvesting and energy conversion to topological materials for quantum computers. The high resistance of these junctions and the stray capacitance of their measurement leads impose speed limitations (tens of seconds) on the traditional methods of measuring their nonlinear conductance, making detailed investigations of change with external fields or maps of variation over a surface impractical, if not impossible. Here we demonstrate fast (milliseconds) reconstruction of nonlinear current-voltage characteristics from phase-coherent multifrequency lock-in data using the inverse Fourier transform. The measurement technique allows for separation of the galvanic and displacement currents in the junction and easy cancellation of parasitic displacement current due to the measurement leads. We use the method to reveal nanometer-scale variations in the electrical transport properties of organic photovoltaic and semiconducting thin films. The method has broad applicability and its wide-spread implementation promises advancement in high-speed and high-resolution characterization for nanotechnology.

We present an alternative approach to pump-probe spectroscopy for measuring fast charge dynamics with an atomic force microscope (AFM). Our approach is based on coherent multifrequency lock-in measurement of the intermodulation between a mechanical drive and an optical or electrical excitation. In response to the excitation, the charge dynamics of the sample is reconstructed by fitting a theoretical model to the measured frequency spectrum of the electrostatic force near resonance of the AFM cantilever. We discuss the time resolution, which in theory is limited only by the measurement time, but in practice is of order one nanosecond for standard cantilevers and imaging speeds. We verify the method with simulations and demonstrate it with a control experiment, achieving a time resolution of 20 ns in ambient conditions, limited by thermal noise.