Determination of SAW phase velocities on the nanoscale

This paper reports the first determination of the phase velocity of surface acoustic waves (SAW) on the nanometer scale. With a scanning acoustic force microscope (SAFM) a maximum lateral resolution of 19.9 nm has been achieved. This is almost two orders of magnitude better than the resolution of standard quantitative acoustic microscopy. The key of measuring the phase of high frequency signals with a slowly responding SAFM cantilever is frequency mixing at its nonlinear force curve. For demonstrating its abilities SAW dispersion was studied on Au layers of different thicknesses by SAFM over a lateral distance down to 200 nm