Spurious-free cantilever excitation in liquid by piezoactuator with flexure drive mechanism.

We have developed a cantilever holder for spurious-free cantilever excitation in liquid by piezoactuator. In the holder, generation and propagation of an acoustic wave are suppressed by "acoustic barriers," i.e., boundaries between two materials having significantly different acoustic impedance while cantilever vibration is excited by "flexure drive mechanism" utilizing elastic deformation of a flexure hinge made of a material having a low elastic modulus. The holder enables to obtain amplitude and phase curves without spurious peaks in liquid using a piezoactuator, which ensures stability and accuracy of dynamic-mode atomic force microscopy in liquid.