Adaptive semi-empirical model for non-contact atomic force microscopy

Non-contact atomic force microscope is a powerful tool to investigate the surface topography with atomic resolution.Here we propose a new approach to estimate the interaction between its tips and samples,which combines a semi-empirical model with density functional theory(DFT)calculations.The generated frequency shift images are consistent with the experiment for mapping organic molecules using CuCO,Cu,CuCl,and CuO_(x)tips.This approach achieves accuracy close to DFT calculation with much lower computational cost.