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This paper treats the simulation of the contact mode of an atomic force microscope (AFM). The contact forces between the tip and the sample surface is calculated via the van derWaals force in a Finite Element approach, the integration of the contact force a FEM environment is discussed and numerical examples are presented. (© 2005 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

In this contribution a model for the numerical simulation of an atomic force microscope (AFM) is presented. A challenge of this goal is the treatment of the multiphysics phenomena on the microscopic length-scale. Hence a coupled strategy is required to incorporate the different physically aspects and their interactions. The strategy is embedded in a nonlinear finite element formulation, where the different aspects are tackled by direct and weak coupling.

Contact at very tiny length-scales is characterized by atomic force interaction. A technical application of interest is the atomic force microscope (AFM). A coupled molecular dynamics (MD) -finite element (FE) approach is outlined to tackle the multi-scale problem by numerical simulation. Guidelines for the spatial discretization are derived from convergence studies.