Improved 3D Imaging Performance of AFM

Abstract

Over the last three decades the Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has played an important role in the field of nanotechnology for imaging and manipulating samples. However, the acquisition of a high-quality imaging performance by an AFM is significantly influenced by its key scanning element called its Piezoelectric Tube Actuator (PTA). In this article, to improve its performance, a multi-input multi-output model predictive control scheme for achieving improved 3D scanned image of sample is proposed. The proposed controller achieves this by greatly overcoming the problem of tilted characters and nonlinearity effects in the AFM scanned images. The experimental outcomes are demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed control technique.