Monday, February 2nd, 2009
Veeco has exited betas with a new Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) named Dimension® Icon™ that provides small-sample resolution for large-samples. Building upon the successful Dimension AFM platform, the latest member of the product line delivers the highest resolution, best ease-of-use, and fastest time-to-results of any large-sample AFM on the market today. “With the Icon AFM, our customers can, more simply than ever, perform analysis ranging from quantitative automated characterization to atomic scale imaging across our core markets of material science, semiconductor, data storage, and energy research,” said Mark R. Munch, Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Veeco Metrology.
The new tool (see Figure) was engineered to enhance technical performance while simultaneously increasing usability and productivity for users. The system uses a revolutionary XYZ closed-loop head that scans at high-speeds while delivering extremely low drift and low noise. The tool’s temperature-compensating position sensors render noise levels in the sub-angstroms range for the Z-axis, and angstroms in X-Y across the 90µm scan range. This extraordinary performance surpasses the noise performance of most open-loop, high-resolution AFMs. A new high-resolution camera and integrated feedback alignment tools deliver faster probe positioning and sample navigation, allowing users to more easily locate features of interest.
A company spokesperson contacted by BetaSights explained that a lot of innovation was required to make the software as easy to use as possible for non-expert users. The result is a tool that is reportedly much easier to use by experts, too. According to one of the Icon AFM’s beta users, Professor Ralf Seemann of Saarland University, Germany, “The Icon provides high-quality data more easily, and in a shorter period of time, than any other AFM that we have used.”
David Rossi, Vice President and General Manager of Veeco’s AFM Business Unit, commented, “Based upon the excellent reviews that the Icon AFM’s best-in-class performance and intuitive graphical user interface have received from our beta customers, we anticipate broad adoption of this platform in both research and industry. A major goal behind the creation of the Icon was to lower the barrier to entry for high-level AFM research, and to bring this technology into the mainstream of microscopy. We are confident that the Dimension Icon AFM will enable our customers to push the limits of their work.” –E.K.