Local Probe Microscopy

The appearance of the scanning tunnelling microscope in 1982 revolutionized the field of microscopy, introducing the concept of near-field microscopy, the basis for local probe microscopes. Different in principle from traditional microscopies, local probe (or near-field) microscopies have developed from the scientific and technical advances of scanning tunnelling microscopy. They all involve scanning a probe tip close to a sample, and provide images that are very high-resolution mappings of specific properties of the sample surface, depending on the type of probe used. Various properties (structural, electronic, chemical, optical, etc.) and their local variations at nanometric or sub-nanometric scales can be imaged and studied. Thanks to their high resolution power, local probe microscopies provide new insights and complement conventional microscopies for studying matter down to the atomic scale.

In the 2020s, after several decades of development, many research and industrial laboratories are using these observation and analysis instruments. They can be used to study the local properties of surfaces (or interfaces) under a wide variety of conditions, depending on the application: ultra-high vacuum for surface physicochemistry, liquid media for biology and electrochemistry, controlled atmosphere for all kinds of materials and for metrology. Table 1 provides a non-exhaustive list of near-field microscopes that can be used to access the characteristic local properties of a sample.