Polyolefin material is universally applied in industry, agriculture, medical, military, daily life and other fields because of its excellent performance and low price. In order to widen the application of polyolefin material, the surface functionalized polyolefin, polyolefin blends with other materials and polyolefin/ nano-inorganic composites were developed and became the focus of this research field. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a technology detecting the surface morphology, physical and chemical information of materials through the interaction between an extremely sharp tip and material surface. AFM plays an important role in the above-mentioned research of polyolefin materials. The surface roughness is one of the most important parameters in the surface functionalization of polyolefin material. While, AFM technology is able to provide accurate information about the surface roughness of such functionalized polyolefin material. Because of AFM technology can directly observe the state of component mixing and phase separation, it becomes an important tool to investigate the polyolefin blends with other materials. In addition, AFM is an efficient method to characterize the morphology of micro- and nano-structural material. Thus, AFM finds its application in the crystallization of polyolefin materials. In this paper, the operating principle and modes of AFM are briefly introduced. The applications of AFM in the research of surface roughness, blend phase separation and crystal of polyolefin materials are mainly reviewed. Contents 1 Introduction
2 AFM technology
3 Application of AFM in polyolefin materials
3.1 Polyolefin surface
3.2 Polyolefin blend phase separation
3.3 Polyolefin crystal
4 Conclusion and Outlook