Design, Modeling, and FPAA-Based Control of a High-Speed Atomic Force Microscope Nanopositioner

An XYZ nanopositioner is designed for fast the atomic force microscopy. The first resonant modes of the device are measured at 8.8, 8.9, and 48.4 kHz along the X-, Y-, and Z-axes, respectively, which are in close agreement to the finite-element simulations. The measured travel ranges of the lateral and vertical axes are 6.5μm×6.6μm and 4.2μm, respectively. Actuating the nanopositioner at frequencies beyond 1% of the first resonance of the lateral axes causes mechanical vibrations that result in degradation of the images generated. In order to improve the lateral scanning bandwidth, controllers are designed using the integral resonant control methodology to damp the resonant modes of the nanopositioner and to enable fast actuation. Due to the large bandwidth of the designed nanopositioner, a field programmable analog array is used for analog implementation of the controllers. High-resolution images are successfully generated at 200-Hz line rate with 200×200 pixel resolution in closed loop.