AN AFM WITH INTEGRATED MICRO-FLUORESCENCE OPTICS - DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE

The combination of scanning probe techniques with various types of microscopes is important not only for the coarse selection of certain spots to be imaged but also for the combined use of different information from the same area. We have developed an integrated micro-fluorescence/atomic force microscope which covers a scannable field of view of 4 x 4 mm at a resolution of about 3-mu-m in fluorescence microscopy and a field of 15 x 15-mu-m2 down to atomic resolution in AFM mode. Our instrument thus covers about 7 orders of magnitude in magnification. We report preliminary investigations with this instrument and show AFM images of polymerized Langmuir-Blodgett films at molecular resolution. Simultaneous micro-fluorescence measurements on the same spot allowed the identification of the direction of the polymer backbone. From the combination of these data a molecular model of the two-dimensional polymer is derived.