Design and input-shaping control of a novel scanner for high-speed atomic force microscopy

A novel design of a scanning unit for atomic force microscopy (AFM) is presented that enables scanning speeds three orders of magnitude faster than compared to conventional AFMs. The new scanner is designed for high mechanical resonance frequencies, based on a new scanner design, which is optimized using finite element analysis. For high-speed scanning a new controller, based on input-shaping techniques, has been developed that reduces imaging artifacts due to the scanner’s dynamics. The implementation of the new AFM system offers imaging capabilities of several thousand lines per second with a scanning range of 13 μm in both scanning directions, and the freedom to choose the fast scan-axis in any arbitrary direction in the X–Y-plane.