Artifacts in SPM

Artifacts in SPM, TopoMetrix Technical Report (TopoMetrix Corp. Santa Clara CA, 1993). 

While SPM offers unique advantages for surface measurement in terms of simplicity and high resolution, it also has its unique problems of image artifacts caused by near-field interactions between tip and sample. The artifacts in imaging may originate from the tip, the scanner, vibrations and/or image processing. Typical artifacts as introduced from several sources are briefly described in this section. 

Sample preparation methods used for SPM imaging are often the cause of artifacts in much... 

Trimming a block to a specific shape and size is more critical for TEM and SPM than for OM. The cured specimen block is cut close to the specimen plane with a jeweler s saw or a razor blade. The pretrimmed block in a microtome chuck is placed in a holder built to fit in the stage of a stereomicroscope. The top surface is cut or faced and then the sides of the block are cut at an oblique angle to provide a trapezoidal shaped block face. Where possible, the epoxy is all trimmed away where this is not possible, a minimum sized block face with little epoxy is prepared. Smaller block faces are better for TEM. The bottom of the section, the part that will be cut by the knife first, should be the longer side of the trapezoid. Block faces on the order of250pm or less help to minimize chatter artifacts that are readily imaged by SPM. 

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