Nanodielectric mapping of a model polystyrene-poly(vinyl acetate) blend by electrostatic force microscopy

C. Riedel (1, 2) , R. Arinero (1, 2) , Philippe Tordjeman (3) , Gaëtan Lévêque (1) , G. A. Schwartz (4) , A. Alegria (5, 4) , J. Colmenero (6, 5, 4)

1 IES - Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes
2 NANOMIR - Composants à Nanostructure pour le moyen infrarouge
3 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse
4 CFM - Centro de Fisica de Materiales
5 UPV/EHU - Universidad del Pais Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea [Espagne]
6 Donostia International Physics Center - DIPC (SPAIN)

We present a simple method to quantitatively image the dielectric permittivity of soft materials at nanoscale using electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) by means of the double pass method. The EFM experiments are based on the measurement of the frequency shifts of the oscillating tip biased at two different voltages. A numerical treatment based on the equivalent charge method allows extracting the values of the dielectric permittivity at each image point. This method can be applied with no restrictions of film thickness and tip radius. This method has been applied to image the morphology and the nanodielectric properties of a model polymer blend of polystyrene and poly(vinyl acetate).

Mots clés: Nanodielectrique

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

C. Riedel, R. Arinero, Philippe Tordjeman, Gaëtan Lévêque, G. A. Schwartz, et al.. Nanodielectric mapping of a model polystyrene-poly(vinyl acetate) blend by electrostatic force microscopy. Physical Review E : Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 2010, vol. 81, ⟨10.1103/PhysRevE.81.010801⟩. ⟨hal-00909186⟩