Innova atomic force microscope

The roughness of the BaM film was measured with a Veeco Innova atomic force microscope. The crystalline structure and film thickness were measured with a Rigaku Smartlab XRD/XRR system. The hysteresis loops of the film were measured with a Microsense EV7 vibrating sample magnetometer. The electrical measurements were conducted with a Quantum Design physical property measurement system supplemented with two lock-in-amplifiers, a preamplifier and two Keithley metres.

The samples for AFM study were prepared on glass support. Briefly, the blends were dissolved in ethyl acetate at 5% w/v concentration. On a glass surface of plates an aliquoted 50 µL of prepared solutions were dispensed and dried in a dryer at 50 °C for 15 min. After that the plates were kept at room temperature, normal pressure for 1 week. AFM images of the prepared films were recorded with a Veeco Innova atomic force microscope in a tapping mode, with tips of resonant frequency of ca. 300 kHz. Images used for further evaluation were prepared in canvases of 10 × 10 μm, with resolution of 512 × 512 pixels (for 0.5Dic-oliP(3HO) and 1 Dic-oliP(3HO)) or 256 × 256 pixels (for 2 Dic-oliP(3HO)). Images were levelled by subtraction of a fitted plane. Minor mutual shifts between line profiles along the fast-scanning axis, due to instrument noise, were smoothed by subtraction of the mean of each line. Root mean square (RMS) roughness (Sq) was calculated on the corrected images as: $S_q=\sqrt{\frac{1}{N}{\displaystyle \sum }_{n=1}^N{\left(z_n-\overline{z}\right)}^2}$
where $z_n$ is the height at point $n$ and $\overline{z}$ the mean height [43 ].
All mathematical operations on the AFM images were conducted with the Gwyddion software [44 (link)].