Hybridizing Surface Probe Microscopies

Book excerpt: Many books and reviews about scanning probe microscopies (SPM) cover the basics of their performance, novel developments, and state-of-the-art applications. Taking a different approach, Hybridizing Surface Probe Microscopies: Towards a Full Description of the Meso- and Nanoworlds encompasses the technical efforts in combining SPM with spectroscopic and optical complementary techniques that, altogether, provide a complete description of nanoscale and mesoscale systems and processes from corrosion to enzymatic reactions. The book is organized into eight chapters, following a general scheme that revolves around the two main capabilities of SPM: imaging and measuring interactions. Each chapter introduces key theoretical concepts and basic equations of the particular stand-alone technique with which the scanning probe microscopies are combined. Chapters end with the SPM-technique combination and some real-world examples in which the combination has been devised or used. Most chapters include a historical review of the techniques and numerous illustrations to support key ideas and provide the reader with intuitive understanding. To understand the limitations of any technique also means to understand how this technique works. This book has devoted a considerable amount of space in explaining the basics of each technique as they are being introduced. At the same time, it avoids explaining the particularities of each SPM-based technique and opts for a rather generalized approach. In short, the book’s focus is not on what SPM can do, but rather on what SPM cannot do and, most specifically, on presenting the experimental approaches that circumvent these limitations.