Compared with traditional optical microscopes and electron microscopes, what factors limit the resolving power of atomic force microscopes?
The resolving power of traditional optical microscopes is limited by the diffraction limit of light, and its minimum resolving distance is half of its light wavelength. The resolving power of the electron microscope is also limited by the diffraction limit, and its minimum resolving power is half of the electron de Broglie wavelength, so the electron microscope can achieve a higher resolving power than the traditional optical microscope.
The resolving power of the atomic force microscope mainly depends on: the size of the probe tip; the elastic coefficient of the micro-cantilever, the lower the elastic coefficient, the more sensitive the atomic force microscope; the ratio of the length of the cantilever to the length of the laser light; the sensitivity of the detector PSD to the spot position . For an image with a certain resolution, the smaller the scanning range, the finer the surface topography obtained.
