Improved Control Strategies for Intermittent Contact Mode Atomic Force Microscopes

Abstract: Atomic force microscopes have proved to be fundamental research tools in many situations where a gentle imaging process is required, and in a variety of environmental conditions, such as the study of biological samples. Among the possible modes of operation, intermittent contact mode is one that causes less wear to both the sample and the instrument; therefore, it is ideal when imaging soft samples. However, intermittent contact mode is not particularly fast when compared to other imaging strategies. In this paper, we introduce three enhanced control approaches, applied at both the dither and z-axis piezos, to address the limitations of existing control schemes. Our proposed strategies are able to eliminate different image artefacts, automatically adapt scan speed to the sample being scanned and predict its features in real time. The result is that both the image quality and the scan time are improved.