Atomic force microscope cantilever as an encoding sensor for real-time displacement measurement

Chen, Xiaomei, Koenders, Ludger, Wolff, Helmut, Haertig, Frank and Schilling, Meinhard (2010) Atomic force microscope cantilever as an encoding sensor for real-time displacement measurement. Measurement Science and Technology, 21 (10). p. 105205. ISSN 0957-0233

Abstract

A tuning fork-based atomic force microscope cantilever has been investigated for application as an encoding sensor for real-time displacement measurement. The algorithm used to encode the displacement is based on the direct count of the integer pitches of a known grating, and the calculation of the fractional parts of a pitch at the beginning and during displacement. A cross-correlation technique has been adopted and applied to the real-time signal filtering process for the determination of the pitch during scanning by using a half sinusoidal waveform template. For the first investigation, a 1D sinusoidal grating with the pitch of 300 nm is used. The repeatability of displacement measurements over a distance of 70 µm is better than 2.2 nm. As the first application, the real-time displacement of a scanning stage is measured by the new encoding principle as it is moved in an open-loop mode and closed-loop mode based on its built-in capacitance sensor.

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