Development of a Sample Scanner for Atomic Force Microscope

원자 현미경용 샘플 스캐너의 개발

This paper shows a method for design of the nano-positioning planar scanner used in the scanning probe microscope. The planar scanner is composed of flexure guides, piezoelectric actuators and feedback sensors. In the design of flexure guides, the Castigliano's theorem was used to find the stiffness of the guide. The motion amplifying mechanism was used in the piezoelectric actuator to achieve a large travel range. We found theoretically the travel range of the total system and verified using the commercial FEM(Finite element method) program. The maximum travel range of the planar scanner is above than 140 $\mu$m. The 3 axis positioning capability was verified by the mode analysis using the FEM program. Moreover, we presented the actual AFM(Atomic Force Microscope) imaging results with up to 2Hz imaging scan rate. Experimental results show that the properties of the proposed planar scanner is well enough to be used in SPM applications like AFM.