Towards High Speed Ferrule-Top Atomic Force Microscopy

This paper introduces a high speed ferrule-top Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) system by integrating an all optic miniaturized ferrule-top cantilever probe with a high speed AFM scanner. The ferrule-top cantilevers are a new generation of AFM probes that are manufactured directly at the end of a ferruled optical fiber. With a laser coupled into the optical fiber from its opposite end, the cantilever deflection readout is directly available via interferometry. This paper is focused on integrating the ferrule-top probes into a high speed AFM system for simplification of the AFM adjustment towards automation and as a pre-step for a fast scanning tip AFM system. Recorded AFM images that are acquired by the ferrule-top AFM system demonstrate successful imaging at the speed of two frames per second, with 256 by 256 pixel resolution.