Atomic force microscopes (AFM) are used to estimate material and surface properties. When using contact-mode AFM, the specimen or the probe is excited near a natural frequency of the system to estimate the linear coefficient of the contact stiffness. Because higher modes offer lower thermal noise, higher quality factors, and higher sensitivity to stiff samples, their use in this procedure is more desirable. However, these modes are candidates for internal resonances, where the energy being fed into one mode may be channeled to another mode. If such interactions are ignored, the results obtained from the probe may be distorted. The method of multiple scales is used to derive an approximate analytical expression to the probe response in the presence of two-to-one autoparametric resonance between the second and third modes. We examine characteristics of this solution in relation to a single-mode response and consider its implications in AFM measurements.
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