title: Height drift correction in non-raster atomic force microscopy.
abstract: We propose a novel method to detect and correct drift in non-raster scanning probe microscopy. In conventional raster scanning drift is usually corrected by subtracting a fitted polynomial from each scan line, but sample tilt or large topographic features can result in severe artifacts. Our method uses self-intersecting scan paths to distinguish drift from topographic features. Observing the height differences when passing the same position at different times enables the reconstruction of a continuous function of drift. We show that a small number of self-intersections is adequate for automatic and reliable drift correction. Additionally, we introduce a fitness function which provides a quantitative measure of drift correctability for any arbitrary scan shape.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
authors.forename: Travis R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.affiliation: Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Dominik
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ziegler
authors.affiliation: Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics, University of Münster, Germany.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Brune
authors.affiliation: Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA.
authors.forename: Rodrigo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Farnham
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA.
authors.forename: Nen
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Huynh
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA.
authors.forename: Jen-Mei
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. Electronic address: bertozzi@math.ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Andrea L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Bertozzi
authors.affiliation: Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. Electronic address: pdashby@lbl.gov.
authors.forename: Paul D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Ashby
keywords: Atomic force microscopy; Drift correction; Non-raster scan; Self-intersecting scan