Theoretical study of the effect of probe shape on adhesion force between probe and substrate in Atomic Force Microscope experiment

The quantitative description of adhesion force dependence on the probe shapes are of importance in many scientific and industrial fields. In order to elucidate how the adhesion force varied with the probe shape in atomic force microscope manipulation experiment, we performed a theoretical study of the influences of the probe shape (the sphere and parabolic probe) on the adhesion force at different humidity. We found that the combined action of the triple point and the Kelvin radius guiding the trend of the adhesion force, and these two fundamental parameters are closely related to the probe shape. Whilst, the theoretical results demonstrate that the adhesion force is in good agreement with the experiment data if the van der Waals force is taken into account.