Cantilevered bimorph-based scanner for high speed atomic force microscopy with large scanning range.

A cantilevered bimorph-based resonance-mode scanner for high speed atomic force microscope (AFM) imaging is presented. The free end of the bimorph is used for mounting a sample stage and the other one of that is fixed on the top of a conventional single tube scanner. High speed scanning is realized with the bimorph-based scanner vibrating at resonant frequency driven by a sine wave voltage applied to one piezolayer of the bimorph, while slow scanning is performed by the tube scanner. The other piezolayer provides information on vibration amplitude and phase of the bimorph itself simultaneously, which is used for real-time data processing and image calibration. By adjusting the free length of the bimorph, the line scan rate can be preset ranging from several hundred hertz to several kilohertz, which would be beneficial for the observation of samples with different properties. Combined with a home-made AFM system and a commercially available data acquisition card, AFM images of various samples have been obtained, and as an example, images of the silicon grating taken at a line rate of 1.5 kHz with the scan size of 20 microm are given. By manually moving the sample of polished Al foil surface while scanning, the capability of dynamic imaging is demonstrated.