Visualization of Spatial Distribution of Magnetic Force by ZXY Measurement

Our everyday environment includes many products using magnetic materials, such as motors and memory devices, and in recent years, nano magnetic materials have been applied in drug discovery research. Although magnetic force microscopy (MFM) employing the scanning probe microscope (SPM) is used in research and development of these materials, conventional MFM was "constant height scanning," in which the probe (cantilever) was kept at a constant distance from the sample. As reported in this article, we carried out measurements applying the new "ZXY measurement" technique and succeeded in visualization of the 3-dimensional distribution of magnetic force, which could not be obtained by conventional techniques.