Development of an NMR force microscopy probe for thin film studies

Presented here are efforts to reconfigure a nuclear magnetic resonance force microscopy (NMRFM) probe to explore thin-film samples. The motivation for this experiment, which would enlist the non-invasive and subsurface capabilities of NMRFM, was to study the conducting interface between LaAIO₃ and SrTiO₃ (LAO/STO), materials which are insulating in bulk. We propose NMRFM as a tool to detect whether there is diffusion across the interface which could explain the conducting region. We adopted the Interrupted OScillating Cyclic Adiabatic Reversal (iOSCAR) protocol to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. This thesis provides background information on nuclear magnetic resonance, NMRFM, and LAO/STO before detailing key probe transformations towards thin-film exploration with iOSCAR.