8Apr2016

Strides in Atomic Force Microscope Design.Posted by Sudhir

Atomic force microscopes may have a big impact on the medical and semiconductor fields in the future but for that to happen, speed will likely have to be less of an issue. Kamal Yousef-Toumi, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, says his team has been making strides in this area.

“Basically, atomic force resolution systems, meaning resolutions down to the atomic level, have been worked on for maybe almost 25 years,” he explains. “We started with funding from Samsung and they do semiconductor manufacturing. Wafers needed to be looked at and inspected so the company wanted an instrument that could look at them in a very fast way because existing commercial instruments didn’t have the speed. That was one of the reasons for designing and making these microscopes, to have high-speed imaging.”

The result was his team’s atomic force microscope, which can scan images 2,000 times faster than existing commercial models.

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