The recorded profile has approximately 30 nm deep, flat-bottomed depressions with broadened, sloping edges. The full-height regions are the inorganic surface; the lower plateaux are the infiltrated perovskite structure. With adequate feedback control, imaging trace and retrace should agree when plotted against the same laboratory position.
The tip has a finite opening angle. Its flank contacts a pore rim before its apex can follow an ideal vertical wall, so tip convolution makes a narrow depression appear narrower and its sidewall less steep. For a flank angle measured from the vertical, the horizontal distance needed to descend a height is . Along the cantilever, the nominal front and back values giveThus the two edges can have different apparent slopes. Across the cantilever, the nominal side angle instead gives about nm on each side. The scan orientation relative to the cantilever must therefore be specified before choosing the relevant pair of slopes.
Even a 100 nm wide pore leaves ample room for the tip apex to reach a flat bottom: in the along-cantilever idealization its bottom plateau is about nm wide. A 200 nm pore gives about 178 nm. The tip height is far greater than the 30 nm step, so it does not prevent access. An unreported finite apex radius adds edge rounding; its size cannot be inferred from the listed flank angles.
Use a force-tilted activation barrier for a generic one-coordinate escape model. A tensile force tilts a free-energy landscape to . If is the initial minimum and the saddle, define and the zero-force barrier . The relevant activation barrier is measured relative to the initial minimum, not an arbitrary absolute transition-state energy. To first order in force,The attempt prefactor is assumed force independent, and the saddle displacement is approximated as constant. This single-barrier approximation need not survive large landscape deformations or a change of escape pathway. TODO: user-deferred biomolecular implementation; the protein-specific shear-force arrangement and attachment chemistry are not solved.
For a generic force-ramp measurement, a calibrated atomic force microscope cantilever pulls an attachment while a stage changes separation. cantilever deflection gives force , and the cantilever compliance correction subtracts from imposed separation to give tether extension, with further corrections for other apparatus compliance. A prescribed stage speed does not automatically produce constant force loading rate when tether stiffness varies; the assumed must be measured or controlled. The original schematic below illustrates a generic nonbiological bond/tether geometry. Protein-specific construction is deferred.
The no-rebinding approximation is a physical escape assumption: after the link breaks, separation removes the partners from the capture region before appreciable reassociation. It requires the integrated return/association probability during that separation to be small. If the separated state stays nearby or the force is held without separation, setting can fail. Under the stipulated approximation, with the link initially intact,This survival under a linear force ramp differs from the probability density for rupture. It starts at one, decreases to zero and shifts to larger force as the loading rate increases. For small , ; a slow ramp allows much escape before substantial force is reached.
The median rupture force under a linear ramp satisfies , givingAt high loading rate, the slope of against tends to ; it is not exactly for a slow ramp. Fit the full expression across loading rates to recover and . The rupture-force probability density is , whose most probable rupture force under a linear ramp is if , and zero otherwise. median and mode are different observables and must not be interchanged when fitting.
At known temperature, yields the activation distance ; gives the zero-force mean lifetime in this exponential model. Absolute barrier height additionally requires the attempt prefactor, and neither equilibrium binding free energy nor an association rate follows from dissociation-only data. A loading-rate-dependent rupture force is a kinetic readout, not an intrinsic equilibrium strength. TODO: user-deferred biological conclusions. The protein-specific stability interpretation and cell-adhesion strategy are left unsolved.
Original generic pulling arrangement, tilted energy landscape and calculated survival under a force ramp
. Details. A force-curve mapping mode that controls the peak repulsive normal force during repeated low-frequency tip-surface contacts. Calibrated force curves provide topography and spatial maps of adhesion, deformation, modulus and dissipated energy. Mechanical-property accuracy depends on tip geometry, cantilever calibration and the contact model.

