Drift-compensated data acquisition performed at room temperature with frequency modulation atomic force microscopy

The authors have performed distortionless atom imaging and force mapping experiments, under a large thermal drift condition at room temperature (RT), using frequency modulation atomic force microscopy (FM-AFM) that had been done previously only at low temperature. In the authors’ experimental scheme, three-dimensional position feedback with atom tracking detects the thermal drift velocity that is constant for a period of time at RT. The detected velocity is then used as the model for implementing the feedforward in order to compensate for the thermal drift. This technique can be expected to be used for precise positioning of the tip-sample in atom manipulation experiments using the FM-AFM at RT.