Advanced Flattening Method for Scanned Atomic Force Microscopy Images

Abstract

This paper presents an advanced °attening method to precisely analyze nanostructures by using atomic force microscopy. Distortions caused by the slope of a sample and nonlinearities of the Z scanner can a®ect the height of the scanned image and make the scanned image di±cult to use for quantitative analysis. We propose an advanced °attening method to °atten an image that does not require the user to be experienced. The distortions can be measured and systematically removed from a scanned image. The proposed method is able to substantially reduce both the artifacts caused by °attening and the inspection time using a scanned image.