Optimization of Easy Atomic Force Microscope (ezAFM) Controls for Semiconductor Nanostructure Profiling

The US Army Research Laboratory recently procured an Easy Atomic Force Microscope ezAFM, from a NanoMagnetics vendor. The ezAFM can profile nanostructures on the order of 2.0 A in the vertical z directions. There are several instruments controls like proportional, integral, and derivative PID gain as well as tip force and laser power that have to be set right to get best surface profiling of semiconductor nanostructured materials. In this report, we present how to obtain good-quality profiling pictures using ezAFM by varying PID values. We used the equipment supplier-provided standard calibration samples as well as our in-house-grown nanostructure samples.