  Devices made from two dimensional materials such as graphene and transition
metal dichalcogenides exhibit remarkable electronic properties of interest to
many subdisciplines of nanoscience. Owing to their 2D nature, their quality is
highly susceptible to contamination and degradation when exposed to the ambient
environment. Protecting the 2D layers by encapsulation between hexagonal boron
nitride layers significantly improves their quality. Locating these samples
within the encapsulant and assessing their integrity prior to further
processing then becomes challenging. Here we show that conductive scanning
probe techniques such as electrostatic force and Kelvin force microscopy makes
it possible to visualize the encapsulated layers, their charge environment and
local defects including cracks and bubbles on the sub-micrometer scale. Our
techniques are employed without requiring electrical contact to the embedded
layer, providing valuable feedback on the local electronic quality prior to any
device etching or electrode deposition. We show that these measurement modes,
which are simple extensions of atomic force microscopy, are perfectly suited
for imaging encapsulated conductors and their local charge environments.
