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Guide to AFM standards and references

Tip Visualization

Helps to visualize geometry of the scanning probe without costly need of SEM. Tip radius sample exhibits features sharper that an AFM tip. First-order approximation of the tip apex can be obtained.


Company Standard/Reference
Aurora NanoDevice Inc. Z ~30nm
X,Y ~10nm
Figure 5: AFM image of a tip checker reference. If the tip is not sharp, it is not possible to visualize the sharp edges in the image. Also, repeated scans of the same are can be used to make sure that the tip is not being dulled by the scanning process. An inability to get good images on a tip checker sample often is because the tip approach mechanism in the microscope is faulty and the tip is broken by tip approach.
Figure 5: AFM image of a tip checker reference. If the tip is not sharp, it is not possible to visualize the sharp edges in the image. Also, repeated scans of the same are can be used to make sure that the tip is not being dulled by the scanning process. An inability to get good images on a tip checker sample often is because the tip approach mechanism in the microscope is faulty and the tip is broken by tip approach.

 
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