Reconstruction of atomic force microscopy image by using nanofabricated tip characterizer toward the actual sample surface topography

Mingsheng Xu; Daisuke Fujita; Keiko Onishi

doi:10.1063/1.3115182

Reconstruction of atomic force microscopy image by using nanofabricated tip characterizer toward the actual sample surface topography

Rev Sci Instrum. 2009 Apr;80(4):043703. doi: 10.1063/1.3115182.

Authors

Mingsheng Xu¹, Daisuke Fujita, Keiko Onishi

Affiliation

¹ International Center for Young Scientists, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-2-1 Sengen, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0047, Japan. xu.mingsheng@nims.go.jp

PMID: 19405662
DOI: 10.1063/1.3115182

Abstract

The atomic force microscopy (AFM) image is a dilation of the sample surface topography due to the finite-sized AFM tip. We accurately estimated the tip apex shape with a nanofabricated Si tip characterizer and applied the estimated tip shape function to a dilation-erosion algorithm for image reconstruction. The reconstructed images from the original AFM images attained with different AFM tips show consistent surface features and closely match the high-resolution field-emission scanning electron microscope image. The results demonstrate the reliability of our method and suggest the importance of AFM image reconstruction for a variety of technologies requiring new strategies of measuring, interpreting, manipulating, and positioning in the submicrometer and nanometer range.