Probing dielectric ceramics surface at sub-micrometer scale

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) with conductive tips has been used to image the dielectric properties of ceramics with giant permittivity. In particular, measurements in impedance mode of local resistivity allowed to image the permittivity map on polycrystalline materials. Such imaging provides correlation between the dielectric properties and the sample structure, in particular focusing on defects inside the single grains. Great attention has been devoted to the possible artefacts due to surface imperfections, such as huge roughness and/or contamination. A reliable surface investigation has been obtained after the definition of both the physical and geometrical criteria to avoid the artefacts due to both the surface or anomalous tip-sample contact area variation (for instance, in grain boundaries, holes and cracks in the ceramic pills). In particular, the power spectral density (PSD) allows to get access to the different periodic components of the surface roughness. The PSD demonstrated to be a sensitive tool to check the surface conditions after the polishing procedures aimed to the progressive decreasing of surface roughness, in order to reach the SPM limits and to avoid artefacts inducing wrong data interpretation.