Title: Complete information acquisition in scanning probe microscopy

Abstract

In the last three decades, scanning probe microscopy (SPM) has emerged as a primary tool for exploring and controlling the nanoworld. A critical part of the SPM measurements is the information transfer from the tip-surface junction to a macroscopic measurement system. This process reduces the many degrees of freedom of a vibrating cantilever to relatively few parameters recorded as images. Similarly, the details of dynamic cantilever response at sub-microsecond time scales of transients, higher-order eigenmodes and harmonics are averaged out by transitioning to millisecond time scale of pixel acquisition. Hence, the amount of information available to the external observer is severely limited, and its selection is biased by the chosen data processing method. Here, we report a fundamentally new approach for SPM imaging based on information theory-type analysis of the data stream from the detector. This approach allows full exploration of complex tip-surface interactions, spatial mapping of multidimensional variability of material s properties and their mutual interactions, and SPM imaging at the information channel capacity limit.

Authors:

Belianinov, Alex ^[1]; Kalinin, Sergei V. ^[1]; Jesse, Stephen ^[1]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Publication Date:

Fri Mar 13 00:00:00 EDT 2015

Research Org.:

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC)

OSTI Identifier:

1185488

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC05-00OR22725

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Nature Communications

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 6; Journal ID: ISSN 2041-1723

Publisher:

Nature Publishing Group

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY; STM; big data; statistical processing