When SPM scanning ranges in the 100’s of microns come up short, t.enable’s solution in the 10’s of millimeters redefines the industry.

The first scanning probe microscopes relied on a clever actuation scheme. The designs were largely based on thin-walled piezoelectric tubes with quartered outer electrodes. This compact, elegant design readily actuated a probe, or small sample, in mutually perpendicular directions with nanometer resolution – but not without its drawbacks. Two of these drawbacks are the hysteresis and creep inherent to piezo-based positioning devices. Easily remedied by closing the loop, it was a number of years before commercially available SPM’s were being offered with hysteresis and creep-free operation. The other drawback, however, is the fundamental limitation of range – piezos do not actuate very far. While some SPM manufacturers offer variations on the thin-walled tube design, all still use piezo-based actuation and thus, are limited to scan areas on the order of 100um x 100um. Typically, a long-range, low-bandwidth coarse stage is placed in series with the high-speed scanning stage. Thus, there is an obvious need for an extended-range solution.

t.enable’s innovative nanopositioning technology is an alternative to piezo-based actuation designs. The goal is to provide SPM manufacturers with a product that will not only meet their rigorous resolution and repeatability specifications, but that will redefine the industry by opening up scan areas by a factor of 10,000 – 10mm x 10mm – in a single high-speed scanning stage, with nanometer resolution. The implications of this added flexibility to nanolithography and nanomanipulation applications are significant.

Nanoscale science will never be the same