Thermal drift study on different commercial scanning probe microscopes during the initial warming-up phase

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) allows surface topography imaging with the highest resolution, as a result of accurate actuation combined with the sharpness of tips. The scanning process is inherently slow and commonly suffers from instrumental drift. Drift evaluation and control is an important issue for quantitative metrology. Drift characterization is essential in order to establish an appropriate method for eliminating, compensating or correcting it, allowing the improvement of measurement quality and accuracy. Drift distortions are often regarded as temperature-dependent phenomena, associated with temperature gradients and transients that may occur both in the single components of the equipment and in the measuring volume. Commercial SPMs are designed and manufactured with different approaches, e. g. combining different scanners' architectures, with selected hardware, software and materials, in order to optimize specific instrument performances such as accuracy and scanning speed. Hence, different SPMs on the market have different drift depending on instrument design and materials. In this work, a set of experiments was conducted on different instruments operating under varying controlled environmental conditions, for drift estimation, with particular reference to the initial warming-up phase. The experimental procedure for drift evaluation was based on repeated measurements on a structured reference grating. Temperature was monitored using an infrared camera. Six different SPMs were compared based on the analysis of the evolution of horizontal and vertical drift over time, allowing correlation of the drift trend with instrument architecture.