AFM Contact Mode Simulator

AFM Contact Mode Simulator is a browser-based educational tool that models how the finite geometry of an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) tip distorts measured surface topography. The distortion is formulated exactly as a Minkowski sum (morphological dilation / erosion) of the sample surface with the negated tip profile.

What it does

• Interactive 2D cross-section and 3D Three.js raster-scan views of tip–surface convolution
• Implements nine tip geometries — sharp/blunt cone, sphere, hyperboloid, flat punch, concave sphere, asymmetric cone, double tip, and cone+sphere apex — each with correct kernel math
• Invert / transform toggles for contrastive teaching of dilation vs. erosion
• Built for EE 5490X (Advanced Microscopy) at Iowa State; deployed as static HTML on Vercel

Computational complexity

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  "grid": { "left": "3%", "right": "4%", "bottom": "3%", "containLabel": true },
  "xAxis": { "type": "category", "data": ["2D simulator", "3D simulator"] },
  "yAxis": { "type": "value", "name": "recompute time (ms)" },
  "series": [
    {
      "type": "bar",
      "data": [5, 20],
      "barMaxWidth": 60,
      "itemStyle": { "color": "#5cc88a", "borderRadius": [4, 4, 0, 0] },
      "label": { "show": true, "position": "top", "formatter": "{c} ms" }
    }
  ]
}

Note: despite the working name (“AFM-AI”), this is a deterministic physics / morphology simulator — there is no learned or ML component.