Recent advances in quantum materials have attracted research on new local imaging techniques to investigate physics at the atomic scale. Our motivation is to design a low-cost low temperature portable atomic force microscope (AFM) suitable for implementing scanning probe techniques on quantum materials and devices. The AFM is intended to be made affordable so that small colleges and high school students have access to such imaging research. One of the first applications of the microscope is to image electron flow in two-dimensional materials such as graphene.
We have built the prototype for the cooled AFM. The base design hardware uses 3D printed parts while the electronics of the microscope are being designed to allow for a fully autonomous AFM. The base circuit uses a custom-made printed circuit board with a Raspberry Pi attached with control software for the microscope. The AFM is able to approach a sample using a PID control system that applies voltage to a piezoelectric tube with height information from the cantilever. We anticipate performing an imaging experiment on graphene samples at liquid Nitrogen temperature within the next few months. In this talk, I will present the design and implementation of the cooled AFM. In the future, we plan to condense the AFM further into a single FPGA chip and use a homemade cantilever chip to enhance the sensitivity. This will allow for better affordability and ease of use.
Presented By
Cody Graves (Slippery Rock University)
Authors
Cody Graves (Slippery Rock University)
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Cooled atomic force microscope for undergraduate research
Mon. March 6, 8:00 a.m. – 8:12 a.m. PST
Room 313
Recent advances in quantum materials have attracted research on new local imaging techniques to investigate physics at the atomic scale. Our motivation is to design a low-cost low temperature portable atomic force microscope (AFM) suitable for implementing scanning probe techniques on quantum materials and devices. The AFM is intended to be made affordable so that small colleges and high school students have access to such imaging research. One of the first applications of the microscope is to image electron flow in two-dimensional materials such as graphene.
We have built the prototype for the cooled AFM. The base design hardware uses 3D printed parts while the electronics of the microscope are being designed to allow for a fully autonomous AFM. The base circuit uses a custom-made printed circuit board with a Raspberry Pi attached with control software for the microscope. The AFM is able to approach a sample using a PID control system that applies voltage to a piezoelectric tube with height information from the cantilever. We anticipate performing an imaging experiment on graphene samples at liquid Nitrogen temperature within the next few months. In this talk, I will present the design and implementation of the cooled AFM. In the future, we plan to condense the AFM further into a single FPGA chip and use a homemade cantilever chip to enhance the sensitivity. This will allow for better affordability and ease of use.