Method of mechanical holding of cantilever chip for tip-scan high-speed atomic force microscope.

In tip-scan atomic force microscopy (AFM) that scans a cantilever chip in the three dimensions, the chip body is held on the Z-scanner with a holder. However, this holding is not easy for high-speed (HS) AFM because the holder that should have a small mass has to be able to clamp the cantilever chip firmly without deteriorating the Z-scanner's fast performance, and because repeated exchange of cantilever chips should not damage the Z-scanner. This is one of the reasons that tip-scan HS-AFM has not been established, despite its advantages over sample stage-scan HS-AFM. Here, we present a novel method of cantilever chip holding which meets all conditions required for tip-scan HS-AFM. The superior performance of this novel chip holding mechanism is demonstrated by imaging of the α3β3 subcomplex of F1-ATPase in dynamic action at ∼7 frames/s.