Fast tip wear in ScanAsyst mode?

Polis Tyrol posted on Fri, Jul 5 2013 2:54 AM

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Dear community,

I use MultiMode 8 AFM in ScanAsyst mode using a ScanAsyst Air tip. Recently, I had to realize that the resolution drops very quickly, probably due to tip wear. I used a fresh tip, scanned a few samples and then scanned my first sample again. It looked very different then. In order to check if the reason was tip wear I imaged anotherone of my samples, replaced the tip, and imaged it again (without moving sample or measuring head in between). With the new tip, the resolution was much better and the image looked quite different. When the "old" tip was used, I saw features with sizes of about 30 nm. I attached two of the images to this post. You can clearly see a big difference between those images, especially in the Peak Force Error images.

As I mentioned, the tip was just a few scans "old". This is a serious issue for me as the features I want to image are of the same size. Could it be that the tip is worn that quickly although the forces were never higher than 1 nN?

Thanks, Dietmar Haba

tip wear.zip