The apparatus is equipped with an optical surface-profiling system (3D) measuring surface morphology with high accuracy from sub-nanometer up to 10 mm size.
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is widely used for measuring surface morphology, mechanical, electrical, and magnetic properties of nanostructured materials [8, 9] and monitoring chemical changes over surfaces [10, 11] due to the benefits of nanometer spatial resolution and high sensitivity.
In AFM images, we measured three surface morphology parameters of the sample: the ten-point height value given as the difference between five maximal peaks and five minimal hollows, average height value, and RMS roughness.
We measured the surface morphology of the as-deposited sample (i.e. without protein incubation) (Fig. 5A), of the same sample after incubation with phosphate-saline buffer (PBS) (Fig. 5B), and with fibrinogen at 0.28 µM (Fig. 5C) and 4.4 µM (Fig. 5D, the same experiment for BSA is presented in Fig. S8).
For the basic study of this purpose, we measured the surface morphology and thickness of the coated films to study the feasibility of PGS as a novel coating material for nitinol bare stent.
The tapping mode was conducted to measure samples' surface morphologies.
In order to further look into the development of the microstructure for GdBCO films with various thicknesses, we measure the surface morphologies of the studied GdBCO films by SEM and AFM. Figure 3a,b,c,d shows the SEM images of GdBCO films with the thicknesses of 200, 1,030, 1,450, and 2,100 nm, respectively.
In each case weight gain was measured and the surface morphology of the oxidized samples were studied using Secondary Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS).
Atomic force microscope and contact angle analyses were used to measure the changes in surface morphology and surface energy as a result of plasma treatment.
Rhombus shape geometries (mesa and opening) are used to measure the etch rate, surface morphology, and undercutting at convex corners, while cantilever patterns are used to demonstrate the application of proposed etchant for the fabrication of suspended MEMS structures.
