Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
730187 Measurement 2014 13 Pages PDF
Abstract

•We designed and implemented a new method for optical beam deflection measurements.•We explain how various components and parameters influence noise, bandwidth and drift.•The new OBD design exhibits a very low drift (2 nm over 1000 s).•The design resulted in a high bandwidth (40 MHz) and low noise (15 fm/Hz0.5).•Static and dynamic thermo-mechanical measurements show the setup’s applicability.

Optical beam deflection (OBD) measurement method is very popular in various types of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and micro/nanomechanical sensors to measure a mechanical motion. This paper reports the detail design and implementation of a very low drift (2 nm over 1000 s), high bandwidth (40 MHz) and low noise (15 fm/Hz) OBD measurement setup that can be used in metrological SPM. The noise, bandwidth and stability of the setup and the thermo-mechanical behavior of SPM cantilevers were systematically characterized. The influences of optical beam spot size, power of the laser beam and the type of position sensitive detector on the total measurement noise for different preamplifications were analyzed in detail. Consequently, recommendations for further improvements of the OBD systems in SPMs and MEMS sensors are given. The results can be used in future high speed, high accurate and low drift SPMs and MEMS sensors applications.

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Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Engineering Control and Systems Engineering
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