An Observer Based Sample Detection Scheme for Atomic Force Microscopy

In dynamic mode operation of Atomic Force Microscopes steady state signals like amplitude and phase are typically used for the detection and imaging of sample. Due to the high quality factor of the micro-cantilever probe the corresponding methods are inherently slow. In this paper we present a novel methodology for fast interrogation of sample that exploits the transient signals. A novel method is introduced for the detection of small tune scale tip-sample interactions. Simulations and experiments show that the method results in significant increase in bandwidth and resolution as compared to the steady state data based methods.