Quadrature phase interferometer for high resolution force spectroscopy
Abstract
In this article, we present a deflection measurement setup for Atomic Force Mi- croscopy (AFM). It is based on a quadrature phase differential interferometer: we measure the optical path difference between a laser beam reflecting above the cantilever tip and a reference beam reflecting on the static base of the sensor. A design with very low environmental susceptibility and another allowing calibrated measurements on a wide spectral range are described. Both enable a very high resolution (down to 2.5E-15 m/√Hz), illustrated by a thermal noise measurement on an AFM cantilever. A quick review shows that our precision is equaling or outperforming the best results reported in the literature, but for a much larger deflection range, up to a few μm
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