A New Type Of Atomic Force Microscope With Dual-scanner And Wide Scan Range

Nanotechnology is increasingly becoming the trend of technology development in today's world, and is playing a major role in the promoting of modern science and technology development and social advancement. Scanning probe microscopy (SPM), which is represented by scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and atomic force microscope (AFM), is an important foundation for the development of nanotechnology, and it's also an essential research tool for nanotechnology workers and researchers. AFM is the most widely used in the SPM. It can be used for testing conductors, semiconductors, insulators and other materials in air, liquid and other environments.This paper reports the domestic and international research and application of AFM technology based on analyzing the shortcomings and deficiencies of existing AFM equipment. It presents a new method for AFM scanning, including the new piezoelectric scanning method and step scan method, and a new AFM system developed with dual-scanner and wide scan range. This AFM can not only detect small samples with high-resolution, but also perform well on the larger sample with a wide range of scanning and imaging.The theoretical method, system design and experimental technology of the new AFM are presented in this paper. The main research works are as follows:A new scanning method was first proposed in this paper, which is using two scanners to scan the sample in XY plate and using the feedback controller to control Z piezoelectric ceramic up or down with micro cantilever. For high resolution, we developed and optimized the piezoelectric ceramic scanning method of traditional AFM. The advantage of this method is using two tube-piezoelectric ceramics to scan the sample in XY plate and using Z piezoelectric ceramic to drive micro cantilever up or down, which removes the cross-coupling error. For wide range scanning, we adopted two electronically controlled translation stages to form a step scanner to drive samples for XY scanning, and have got large range AFM images in experimental study through scanning large samples by this step scanner.According to the new scanning method, we have successfully developed an AFM system with dual-scanner and wide scan range. The system is running well, which can meet the requirements of scanning large sample with a wide scan range and ensure high resolution when scanning a small area. According to the different characteristics of the piezoelectric scanner and step scanner, and the particular requirements for measuring samples, we designed a set of well-functioned scan control software. This software not only enables control of the piezoelectric scanning mode and the step scanning mode, but also provides a function of stitching a sequence of images.A variety of samples were scanned by using this AFM system. The experiments included high-resolution scanning of small samples and wide range scanning of large samples. We obtained good experimental results which verified the good performance of the system. Through the sequence image stitching, we obtained wider range AFM images based on the current scan range, which greatly expanded the application scope of this AFM.