Laser guided tip approach with 3D registration to a surface
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Secretary of Commerce, The National Institute of Standards and Technology
InventorsThomas T. Perkins, Gavin M. King, Ashley R. Carter
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Abstract
The present invention relates to a method of rapidly and repeatably bringing sharp objects into close proximity to a particular region of interest of a sample with high precision and accuracy in two or three dimensions using a laser guided tip approach with three dimensional registration to the surface.
Claims20
A method for rapidly and repeatably bringing sharp objects into close proximity to a particular region of interest of a surface comprising:
- a. projecting laser light onto a first tip region of a scanning probe microscope to produce back-scattered light;
- b. projecting laser light onto a region of interest of a sample to produce back-scattered light;
- c. receiving the back-scattered light by a photosensitive device, said photosensitive device converting the received back-scattered light into one of electrical or optical signals capable of identifying the dimensional positions of said first tip and said region of interest;
- d. aligning said positions with respect to said laser light;
- e. providing an output control signal related to the signal output from the photosensitive device from a feedback algorithm/process to a precision positioner to stably maintain said positions over a time interval;
- f. removing the first tip of the scanning probe microscope;
- g. replacing the first tip of the scanning probe microscope with a second tip;
- and
- h. returning said second tip to the identified dimensional positions of said first tip and said region of interest with said precision positioner.
The method of 1 wherein the tip region is the tip.
The method of 1 wherein the region of interest is a fiducial mark.
A method for rapidly and repeatably bringing sharp objects into close proximity to a particular region of a surface comprising:
- a. projecting laser light onto a first tip region of a scanning probe microscope to produce back-scattered light;
- b. projecting laser light onto a first region of interest of a sample to produce back-scattered light;
- c. receiving the back-scattered light by a photosensitive device, said photosensitive device converting the received back-scattered light into one of electrical or optical signals capable of identifying the dimensional positions of said first tip and said feature;
- d. aligning said positions with respect to said laser light;
- e. providing an output control signal related to the signal output from the photosensitive device from a feedback algorithm/process to a precision positioner to stably maintain said positions over a time interval;
- f. replacing the first region of interest of a sample with a second region of interest of a sample;
- g. projecting laser light onto said second region of interest of a sample to produce back-scattered light and repeating said receiving the back-scattered light by a photosensitive device, said aligning said positions with respect to said laser light, said providing an output control signal related to the signal output from the photosensitive device from a feedback algorithm/process to a precision positioner to stably maintain said positions over a time interval with respect to said tip region and said second region of interest of a sample;
- and
- h. returning said tip region to the identified dimensional positions of said tip region and said first region of interest with said precision positioner.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.