Similar to Scanning Tunneling Microscopy in ambient air, SICM operates in liquid without any physical contact with or force applied to sample surface. It is an ideal tool to obtain stable images of soft and sticky biological samples in liquid.
Force modulation microscopy (FMM) measures mechanical property variations over a sample surface. While in contact with the sample surface, an AC modulation is applied to the cantilever.
A sharp magnetized tip scans a magnetic sample; the tip-sample magnetic interactions are detected and used to reconstruct the magnetic structure of the sample surface.
Conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM) is a variation of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), which uses electrical current to construct the surface profile of the studied sample.