Atomic force acoustic microscopy (AFAM) is a dynamical AFM-based technique very promising for nondestructive analysis of local elastic properties of materials. AFAM technique represents a powerful investigation tool in order to retrieve quantitative evaluations of the mechanical parameters, even at nanoscale. The quantitative determination of elastic properties by AFAM technique is strongly influenced by a number of experimental parameters that, at present, are not fully under control. One of such issues is that the quantitative evaluation require the knowledge of the tip geometry effectively contacting the surface during the measurements. We present and discuss an experimental approach able to determine, at first, tip geometry from contact stiffness measurements and, on the basis of the achieved information, to measure sample indentation modulus. The reliability and the accuracy of the technique has been successfully tested on samples (Si, GaAs, and InP) with very well known structural and morphological properties and with indentation modulus widely reported in literature. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics

Two contact resonance frequencies atomic force acoustic microscopy imaging technique has been used to evaluate local indentation modulus of a diamondlike carbon film deposited on a molybdenum foil by laser ablation from glassy carbon target. Acoustic images were obtained by measuring both first and second contact resonance frequency at each point of the scanned area, and then numerically evaluating local contact stiffness and reconstructing an indentation modulus bidimensional pattern. The wide difference of the indentation modulus values allows to detect the presence of residual glassy carbon agglomerates in the diamondlike carbon film.

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By measuring fracton mode displacements in artificial piezoelectric composites with hierarchical structure, we find direct evidence of their localized and self-similar character. Clear indications of the existence of multiple fracton and phonon regimes are also presented