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ActivResonance Controller

What Does the ActivResonance Controller Do?

• Greater force sensitivity
• Faster scan rates in air
• Superior imaging in liquids
• Imaging softer materials
• Reducing the effective quality factor in UHV experiments
• Applications in atomic force microscopy, SNOM, and shear force microscopy

The ActivResonance Controller is an invaluable accessory for scanning probe microscopes.

By electronically changing the effective properties of your force sensor, it allows you to fine tune its response to any interaction. It dramatically improves the performance of existing force microscopes, especially when working in liquid environment.

When operating a scanning force microscope in dynamic mode it is the quality factor that controls the settle time of the oscillating probe, and therefore how long the probe takes to react to a change in interaction. With the ActivResonance Controller it is possible to reduce the effective quality factor, allowing faster scan rates without having an adverse impact on force sensitivity.

When imaging in liquid using a dynamic mode, the cantilever's oscillation is heavily damped. The lateral forces are reduced considerably, but the normal forces are still high enough to distort many samples, and make imaging impossible. The phase angle measurement now a standard tool for enhancing contrast in air, is almost completely lost in liquid. These problems originate from the viscous damping of the AFM cantilever by the liquid environment. The ActivResonance Controller's patent pending technology electronically removes the effective damping of the cantilever. This gives back to the user all the advantages of tapping in air, without having to make any compromises on environmental conditions.

The ActivResonance Controller feeds back the processed amplitude and phase response of the cantilever into the drive signal, allowing the effective quality factor of the cantilever