A parallel kinematic scanner designed for high-speed atomic force microscopy

Abstract

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a useful tool in nanoscale measurement. However, conventional AFM suffers from slow scan speed, limiting the use for biological detection or nanofabrication, due to the limited bandwidth of AFM components. In which the resonant frequency of the AFM scanner is usually too low to achieve high-speed scanning. In this paper, a parallel kinematic piezoelectric actuator (PZT) AFM scanner is designed to achieve high-speed atomic force microscopy (HS-AFM) scanning. After that, finite element analysis (FEA) is adopted to characterize the scanner. Finally, images of standard gratings obtained at 25 Hz with our home-made AFM system is presented after calibration and motion coupling compensation.