Improvement of accuracy and speed of a commercial AFM using positive position feedback control

Abstract

The Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) is a device capable of generating topographic images of sample surfaces with extremely high resolutions down to the atomic level. It is also being used in applications that involve manipulation of matter at a nanoscale. Early AFMs were operated in open loop. As a result, they were susceptible to piezoelectric creep, thermal drift, hysteresis nonlinearity and scan-induced vibration. These effects tend to distort the generated image. The distortions are often minimized by limiting the scanning speed and range of the AFMs. Recently a new generation of AFMs has emerged that utilizes position sensors to measure displacements of the scanner in three dimensions. These AFMs are equipped with feedback loops that work to minimize the adverse effects of hysteresis, piezoelectric creep and thermal drift on the obtained image using standard PI controllers. These feedback controllers are often not designed to deal with the highly resonant nature of an AFM's scanner, nor with the crosscoupling between various axes. In this paper we illustrate the drastic improvement in accuracy and imaging speed that can be obtained by proper design of a feedback controller. Such controllers can be incorporated into most modern AFMs with minimal effort since they can be implemented in software with the existing hardware.

Control of resonant modes of a smart structure using OMPC

“…In this work for the modeling of cantilever beam dynamics an experimental approach [13] is considered. For simplifying the control design, the cantilever is treated as a single-input single-output (SISO) system.…”

High performance control of atomic force microscope for high-speed image scanning

“…Piezoelectric creep, thermal drift, induced vibration, and hysteresis nonlinearity of the scanner adversely affects the tracking accuracy and speed of operation of an AFM [5]. The use of feedback control techniques other than PI controllers to improve tracking accuracy and scanning speed of AFMs has been undertaken by a number of researchers [5]- [9].…”

“…Mechanical vibration is also responsible for the poor image quality of the AFM and this vibration is created because of the resonant modes in the PZT actuator. To avoid this problem, the scanning speed of AFMs is often kept limited to 1% [5] of the scanner's first resonance frequency. This vibration can be compensated by proper damping of the resonant modes.…”

Model predictive control of atomic force microscope for fast image scanning

“…1 adversely affects the tracking accuracy and speed of operation of an AFM. The use of feedback control techniques other than PI controllers to improve tracking accuracy and scanning speed of AFMs has been undertaken by a number of researchers for the past decade, e.g., [5], [6], [7], [8].…”