Correlation-steered scanning for scanning probe microscopes to overcome thermal drift for ultra-long time scanning

The thermal effect is one of the most important factors that influence the accuracy of nanoscale measurement and the surface topography of samples in scanning probe microscopes (SPMs). We propose a method called correlation-steered scanning, which is capable of overcoming three-dimensional thermal drifts in real time for ultra-long time scanned images. The image is scanned band by band with overlapping parts between adjacent bands. The vertical drift can be considered as linear and can thus be eliminated together with the tilt of the sample by applying the flattening method. Each band is artificially divided into several blocks for conveniently calculating lateral drifts on the basis of the overlapping area of adjacent bands through digital image correlation. The calculated lateral drifts are compensated to steer the scanning of the subsequent blocks, thus ensuring that all bands are parallel to one another. Experimental results proved that images scanned by the proposed method exhibited less distortions than those obtained from the traditional raster scanning method. The nanoscale measurement results based on the image obtained by the proposed method also showed high accuracy, with an error of less than 1.5%. By scanning as many bands as needed, the correlation-steered scanning method can obtain a highly precise SPM image of an ultra-large area.