The necessity of tip's shape estimation arises very often during AFM measurements. Even if manufacturer claims this parameter with high accuracy, fast tip's wear off during scanning leads to the need of its repeated re-calculation.
One of the most popular and cheapest methods to control tip's apex is so-called "blind" tip's shape estimation, suggested by J.S. Villarrubia in 1997. Now it is implemented in many different AFM-image-processing programs. But proper choice of a test sample for such investigation is also a tricky task. It should include many densely packed and respectively hard particles, which size will of the same order that tip's curvature radius.
Today we present our new product: TSD01, the test sample for tip's curvature radius estimation. TSD01 consists of large variety of densely packed particles with average diameter around 60 nm. Particles’ shape is not ideally round. Some of them are rather cylindrical, some ones have got vertical walls and sharp corners (like as on the REM photo). These features are necessary to collect enough statistics for further “blind” tip estimation using Deconvolution algorithm.
Another possible usage of this test sample - qualitative tip's quality control by simple comparison of TSD01 scans "before" and "after" scanning.
More information about TSD01 is presented on its product page. We will be also glad to discuss deconvolution method, its possible applications and correct usage of TSD01 for it. Please, contact us if any questions will appear.
