Regulation of a microcantilever response by force feedback

Abstract

A feedback mechanism is used to control the forces incident on a mechanical microcantilever as a function of the monitored cantilever motion. The control is effected by modifying the intensity of an auxiliary laser beam that generates a thermally induced stress. The feedback is designed to reduce the effective resonance quality factor of the cantilever. The resultant regulation of the cantilever motion is shown to improve the measurement dynamics in atomic force microscopy, without significantly degrading the signal to noise ratio.