Effect of chain length of self-assembled monolayers on adhesion force measurement by AFM

It has been confirmed experimentally that the adhesion force measured between an atomic force microscope (AFM) tip and the self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) has a direct correlation with the chain length of SAMs, and that the adhesion force decreases with the increase of the chain length. In this paper, a theoretical model is put forward to calculate the adhesion force between the AFM tip and the SAMs by integrating the Lennard-Jones potential. The theoretical results are in good agreement with the existing experimental results.