Atomic Force Microscope Manufacturer

High School Senior Emily Cathey with the TT-2 AFM at Roanoke Valley Governor’s School for Science and Technology

Corroded copper scanned by Emily – dark spots represent developing pits in the metal’s surface

 
Emily's award winning poster

Using funds from the NSF Center for Chemistry at the Space Time Limit (CaSTL) the Irvine Unified School District purchased an AFM and ran an eight year project. During the project, on an annual basisa group of high school students had the opportunity to construct the TT-AFM and learn how to operate it in a laboratory environment

The Mechanical Engineering Department at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has a laboratory course that introduces undergraduate students to both optical and atomic force microscopy (AFM).

For the AFM section of the course, the University purchased four TT- AFMs from AFMWorkshop. Their curriculum includes training students how to operate the AFM, how to calibrate the AFM, and how to utilize the AFM to measure mechanical resonances. Each year about 150 students take this six week class; since bringing in the AFMWorkshop AFMs, the University of Michigan Mechanical Engineering Dept has provided over 1000 undergraduate students with a hands-on opportunity to operate an atomic force microscope.

The Mechanical Engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology purchased a TT AFM for use as a development platform for student projects. In a recent project, student Nisal Ovitigala created a haptic interface for the TT-AFM. The haptic feedback controller and accompanying computer visualization application enabled students to “feel and see” the forces an AFM tip experiences as it approaches the surface of a measured sample. These forces are far below our human experience, however they’re critical to understanding AFM performance.

The MIT Learning Engineering and Practice (LEAP) group worked to test the use of the haptic and visualization as a medium for providing information to undergraduate students. In their pre and post assessment research, they found a 55 – 96 % increase in student understanding as a result of the haptic controller. Their idea is to increase this type of virtual hands-on learning to further address the access issues of expensive scientific tools and to aid in the democratization of science.

Howard University uses two TT-AFMs, including one that’s aboard their Nano Express. The Nano Express is a mobile outreach unit that travels the Eastern seaboard on a mission to provide science education to the “K to Grey” population. Gary Harris,( D 2020) conceived of the mobile lab with a goal “to bring nanotechnology to students - real applications on instruments that typically no high school can afford.” Over the years of its operation, Dr Harris estimated the lab shared tools with over 10,000 annually. Here's an article from a few years back detailing AFMs and the Howard Univeristy NanoExpress

Undergraduate students in the advanced physics laboratory course all receive hands-on training on their AFMWorkshop TT-AFM. In addition to learning how to operate the AFM and how to scan standard reference samples, students learn to make noise floor measurements, measure surface interaction forces, evaluate cantilever mechanics, and scan polymer samples.

Dr. Jiang Sheng in the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences at Texas A&M purchased an AFMWorkshp TT2-AFM to support his research into biofilm structure and mechanics. On a routine basis, Dr Sheng includes undergraduates in his research projects and helps them learn the theory and operation of the Atomic Force Microscope.

At Bar-Ilan University, Dr. Aryeh Weiss has both a TT-AFM and a TT-2 AFM in the Advanced Bio-Engineering Teaching Laboratory. During his laboratory course, students use the AFMs and learn to make metrology measurements. This course also includes a thorough module on processing AFM images. Dr. Weiss purchased the TT-AFM in 2013 and the TT-2 in 2017. Almost ten years and hundreds of students later, the TT-AFM remains a robust and practical tool for students to gain experience using “new” state of the art technology.