A metrological large range atomic force microscope with improved performance.

A metrological large range atomic force microscope (Met. LR-AFM) has been set up and improved over the past years at Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). Being designed as a scanning sample type instrument, the sample is moved in three dimensions by a mechanical ball bearing stage in combination with a compact z-piezostage. Its topography is detected by a position-stationary AFM head. The sample displacement is measured by three embedded miniature homodyne interferometers in the x, y, and z directions. The AFM head is aligned in such a way that its cantilever tip is positioned on the sample surface at the intersection point of the three interferometer measurement beams for satisfying the Abbe measurement principle. In this paper, further improvements of the Met. LR-AFM are reported. A new AFM head using the beam deflection principle has been developed to reduce the influence of parasitic optical interference phenomena. Furthermore, an off-line Heydemann correction method has been applied to reduce the inherent interferometer nonlinearities to less than 0.3 nm (p-v). Versatile scanning functions, for example, radial scanning or local AFM measurement functions, have been implemented to optimize the measurement process. The measurement software is also improved and allows comfortable operations of the instrument via graphical user interface or script-based command sets. The improved Met. LR-AFM is capable of measuring, for instance, the step height, lateral pitch, line width, nanoroughness, and other geometrical parameters of nanostructures. Calibration results of a one-dimensional grating and a set of film thickness standards are demonstrated, showing the excellent metrological performance of the instrument.