Fast imaging with alternative signal for dynamic atomic force microscopy

In this paper, a method for imaging in amplitude-modulation atomic force microscopy is developed which enables accurate sample-profile imaging even at high scanning speeds where existing methods that use the actuator input signal fail. The central concept is to use a model of the vertical positioning actuator to compensate for the artifacts introduced due to its compliance in high scanning frequencies. We provide experiments that compare sample-profile estimates from our method with the existing methods and demonstrate significant improvement (by 70%) in the estimation bandwidth. The proposed design allows for specifying a trade-off between the sample-profile estimation error and estimation bandwidth.