Lu Nianhang, Xiao Shasha, Zhang Rui, Liu Jirui, Ma Long, Wu Sen
State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China.
Sino-European Institute of Aviation Engineering, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin 300300, China.
Rev Sci Instrum. 2022 Aug 1;93(8):083702. doi: 10.1063/5.0093080.
We present a novel thin head atomic force microscope (AFM) that can be easily integrated with an upright optical microscope (OM). The optical beam detection unit in the AFM used an obliquely incident laser beam onto the cantilever, reducing the AFM head's effective thickness to 7.3 mm. That allows an open space above the cantilever probe to accommodate the objective lens up to 0.6 numerical aperture (N.A.) without obstruction. A multi-function digital controller was developed to control the AFM and reserved interfaces to communicate with the OM. To assess the performance of the developed AFM, we first measured the noise level and bandwidths of the AFM system. Then, the imaging quality of the AFM was evaluated by both calibration grids and two-dimensional materials. Finally, the thin head AFM was integrated into a homemade white light interferometer as a demonstration of combined use with an advanced optical system. The experimental results demonstrated that our developed AFM is suitable for integration under upright OM and brings AFM high-resolution advantages to the existing OM system.
我们展示了一种新型的薄头原子力显微镜（AFM），它可以轻松地与正立式光学显微镜（OM）集成。AFM中的光束检测单元使用倾斜入射到悬臂上的激光束，将AFM探头的有效厚度减小到7.3毫米。这使得悬臂探针上方有开放空间，可容纳数值孔径高达0.6（N.A.）的物镜而不受阻碍。开发了一种多功能数字控制器来控制AFM，并预留了与OM通信的接口。为了评估所开发AFM的性能，我们首先测量了AFM系统的噪声水平和带宽。然后，通过校准网格和二维材料评估了AFM的成像质量。最后，将薄头AFM集成到自制的白光干涉仪中，作为与先进光学系统联合使用的演示。实验结果表明，我们开发的AFM适用于在正立式OM下集成，并为现有的OM系统带来AFM的高分辨率优势。
