Reduction of phase error between sinusoidal motions and vibration of a tube scanner during spiral scanning using an AFM

The design of a phase-locked loop (PLL)-based proportional integral (PI) controller for compensating the phase error between motions from the lateral axes of a piezoelectric tube scanner (PTS) during spiral scanning for an atomic force microscope (AFM) is proposed in this paper. Spiral motion of the PTS for scanning of material surfaces or biological samples using an AFM is achieved by applying two sinusoidal signals with a 90 degree phase-shift and of varying amplitudes to the X and Y-axes of the scanner. The phase error between the X and Y-axes positions and scanner’s vibration due to its mechanical properties increase with increasing scanning speeds which reduce the imaging performance of the AFM at high frequencies. In the proposed control scheme, a vibration compensator is used with the X and Y-PTS to damp the vibration of the PTS at its resonant frequency and the phase error between the displacements of the two lateral axes of the scanner is measured by a phase detector and a PI controller is used to reduce the error. Comparisons of experimental results for reference tracking and imaging performance with the AFM PI controller demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed control method.