High temperature AFM imaging - A video from RHK

Here is a movie RHK made some days ago with the Beetle UHV750 HV AFM. This system is only turbo pumped. The sample is Si at 500C, measured in contact AFM mode. Each image took about 7 minutes. The acquisition ran for about 24 hours. The low drift is amazing. The data shown is WITHOUT ANY drift correction during acquisition or in post-processing. This is RAW data!

The RHK technicians did a quick calculation and it looks like the drift at 500C is less than most ambient AFMs at room temperature. In fact the drift is about ten times lower than most ambient systems. Near the end of the movie you see a jump of the sample when the technicians bumped into the microscope. You can see the evolution of the sample and various particles moving around the surface. If you are interested in high temperature imaging, this may be the best high temperature contact AFM movie ever made.

RHK did not try to push this system to the limit. RHK imaged for a couple hours at 650C. Again there was very little drift.