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Review of Scientific Instruments / Volume 83 / Issue 2 / ARTICLES / Microscopy and Imaging

Rev. Sci. Instrum. 83, 023706 (2012); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3683236 (4 pages)

Constant tip-surface distance with atomic force microscopy via quality factor feedback

Lin Fan, Daniel Potter, and Todd Sulchek

George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA

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(Received 18 October 2011; accepted 21 January 2012; published online 10 February 2012)

The atomic force microscope (AFM) is a powerful and widely used instrument to image topography and measure forces at the micrometer and nanometer length scale. Because of the high degree of operating accuracy required of the instrument, small thermal and mechanical drifts of the cantilever and piezoactuator systems hamper measurements as the AFM tip drifts spatially relative to the sample surface. To compensate for the drift, we control the tip-surface distance by monitoring the cantilever quality factor (Q) in a closed loop. Brownian thermal fluctuations provide sufficient actuation to accurately determine cantilever Q by fitting the thermal noise spectrum to a Lorentzian function. We show that the cantilever damping is sufficiently affected by the tip-surface distance so that the tip position of soft cantilevers can be maintained within 40 nm of a setpoint in air and within 3 nm in water with 95% reliability. Utilizing this method to hover the tip above a sample surface, we have the capability to study sensitive interactions at the nanometer length scale over long periods of time.

© 2012 American Institute of Physics

Article Outline

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
  3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
    1. Feedback control
    2. Cantilever Q versus tip-surface distance in air
    3. Tip-surface distance control in air
    4. Effect of cantilever properties and setpoint distance on tip-surface distance control in air
    5. Cantilever Q measurement precision
    6. Cantilever Q versus tip-surface distance in water
  4. CONCLUSIONS

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KEYWORDS, PACS, and IPC

Keywords

atomic force microscopy, Brownian motion, closed loop systems, piezoelectric actuators, Q-factor, spatial variables control

PACS

International Patent Classification (IPC)

  • G05D3/00

    Control of position or direction

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3683236

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0034-6748 (print)  
1089-7623 (online)

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Institute of Physics

For access to fully linked references, you need to log in.
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