Harmonic Bounds in Atomic Force Microscopy

Donatello Materassi, Murti V. Salapaka, Michele Basso

Abstract: The paper addresses the problem of evaluating magnitude bounds on higher harmonics of the periodic tip oscillation in an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). The suggested approach considers a class of nonlinearities well suited to the tip-sample interaction in AFMs, and reduces the bounding problem to an optimization problem. For a relaxation of the problem a solution in a closed form is provided and reduces the conservativeness of estimates existing in literature.