GAMBETTI KENOLOGIA

Advances in Atomic Force Microscopy – Seminar and Life Demo

27 – 28 September 2017, 14:00 – 15:30

Faculty of Civil and Industrial Engineering
Sapienza University of Rome

ABSTRACT

SPM core & ancillary technology for advanced research

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has been widely used to measure and characterize the surface of a sample in the nanometer scale.  One of the latest advancements in AFM industry has been the elimination of this cross-talk in the XY scan.  Here, the XY flexure scanner, driving a sample, is decoupled from the Z scanner to which a probe is attached.  The new AFM platform has a highly orthogonal and ultra flat scan. These key attributes of the new AFM are central to the accurate and reproducible measurements for quantitative nanoscale metrology.  Building upon the strength of the crosstalk eliminated platform, the new AFM adds the remarkable capability of non-contact AFM in ambient atmosphere by adopting a high speed Z scanner actuated by dedicated high force piezostacks. The non-contact mode preserves the sharp tip and, therefore, provides highly accurate and repeatable measurements of the sample geometry through tip de-convolution and quantitative measurement.

To improve the quantitative measurement, we developed self-optimizing algorithms for the scan parameters of the non-contact mode, such as servo gain, set-point, and scan speed by analyzing the tip-sample interaction force and the scan data of previous line. In the new Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) system, the user only needs to set the scan area and the z servo error limit that corresponds to the degree of image quality while minimizing human skill factors.

The new improved SPM not only produced accurate images faster, but also allowed various new industrial applications for HDD and semiconductor industry as well as basic research applications. Eventually, SPM will become as easy and widely adopted as optical microscope.

PROGRAMME

SPEAKER INFORMATION:

Victor Bergmann – Application Scientist at Park Systems