Investigations of space charge distributions by atomic force microscope

The requirement of the investigation of the space charge distribution in dielectric materials with less than one micrometer resolution draws the attention on the use of the atomic force microscope. The surface potential measurement by the Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (KPFM) enables to calculate the space charges by solving Poisson equation for electrostatics. To overcome the noise problem in experimental data, a proper smoothing and derivative procedure has been developed to find the space charge and the electric field distribution.