Improving the imaging speed of AFM with modern control techniques

In Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), the dynamics and non-linearities of the positioning stage are major sources of image artifacts and distortion, especially when imaging at high-speed. This contribution discusses some recent developments to compensate for these adverse effects of the positioning stage dynamics in high-speed AFM by utilizing modern control methods. The improvements on both the lateral scanning motion and in controlling the tip-sample interaction force are demonstrated to allow significantly faster, and more accurate AFM imaging. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.