  The presence of electrostatic forces and associated artifacts complicates the
interpretation of piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) and electrochemical
strain microscopy (ESM). Eliminating these artifacts provides an opportunity
for precisely mapping domain wall structures and dynamics, accurately
quantifying local piezoelectric coupling coefficients, and reliably
investigating hysteretic processes at the single nanometer scale to determine
properties and mechanisms which underly important applications including
computing, batteries and biology. Here we exploit the existence of an
electrostatic blind spot (ESBS) along the length of the cantilever, due to the
distributed nature of the electrostatic force, which can be universally used to
separate unwanted long range electrostatic contributions from short range
electromechanical responses of interest. The results of ESBS-PFM are compared
to state-of-the-art interferometric displacement sensing PFM, showing excellent
agreement above their respective noise floors. Ultimately, ESBS-PFM allows for
absolute quantification of piezoelectric coupling coefficients independent of
probe, lab or experimental conditions. As such, we expect the widespread
adoption of EBSB-PFM to be a paradigm shift in the quantification of nanoscale
electromechanics.

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics;Materials Science