Introduction Atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides a unique direct-visualiza- tion tool to study the three-dimen- sional structure of adsorbed sur- factants on solid surfaces. In the limited body of reported topogra- phy data, however, the heights of observed surfactant aggregates were significantly lower than expected values. The reduced corrugation on an AFM topography image is usually due to the fact that the surface adsorbates are soft compared to the spring constant of the can- tilever and the applied force is too high. The technique commonly used to image weakly adsorbed surfactant aggregates in contact mode AFM is to maintain a force within the pre-contact double- layer electrostatic interaction range (1, 2). Generally, the force is on the order of 101 to 102 pN. The difficulty encountered in obtaining uncompressed topography images on adsorbed surfactant aggregates seemed to suggest that such small forces were still too high for the soft surfactants.