Abstract
A single 210-nm Teflon nanoparticle (sTNP) was attached to the vertex of a silicon nitride (Si 3 N 4 ) atomic force microscope tip and charged via contact electrification. The charged sTNP can then be considered a point charge and used to measure the electrostatic field adjacent to a parallel plate condenser using 30-nm gold/20-nm titanium as electrodes. This technique can provide a measurement resolution of 250/100 nm along the X- and Z-axes, and the minimum electrostatic force can be measured within 50 pN. © 2013 Chang et al.; licensee Springer.