Since its invention in the last 80th, the scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is continuously developing in its techniques and applications. Now SPM family such as scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) and scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) has became an indispensable tool for the investigation and manipulation of matter at the nanometer-scale in many scientific disciplines: surface science, surface chemistry, electrochemistry, materials science, optics, biology and geology etc. Locally imaging and probing surfaces of metals, semiconductors or insulators on the atomic resolution by STM and AFM is nowadays a routine in most of the laboratories in the world. By changing the nature of the probe-sample interaction and signal detection mechanism, SPM techniques such as AFM, SNOM, SThM … have greatly expanded applications in physics, chemistry and biology, especially in life sciences. Today making an overview of all SPM techniques and applications in one book is almost impossible. The papers in the present issue describe recent progress on SPM development including the treatment of the theoretical and experimental techniques, the design and instrumentation of practical SPM instruments and the applications of these techniques in different fields. We are very grateful to all our colleagues who took the efforts to prepare manuscripts and provided them in timely manner. Their activity will help scientists in research and development fields to be informed about the latest achievements in scanning probe methods.