Force feedback microscopy circumvents the jump to contact in atomic force microscopy
when using soft cantilevers and quantitatively measures the interaction properties at the
nanoscale by simultaneously providing force, force gradient, and dissipation. The force
feedback microscope developed so far used an optical cavity to measure the tip
displacement. In this Letter, we show that the more conventional optical beam deflection
scheme can be used to the same purpose. With this instrument, we have followed the …