Correction of Artifacts and Optimization of Atomic Force Microscopy Imaging: A Case of Thin Aluminum Films for Prosthetic Applications

Acquisition of experimental data from atomic force microscopy (AFM) sometimes has artefacts that distort the information contained in the image. Such artefacts can be very delirious especially for sensitive applications such as in biomedical and microelectronics. This chapter illustrates the correction of the artefacts resulting from tapping mode imaging. It also shows the application of Taguchi optimization technique for reducing artefacts during AFM imaging. Using AFM images of Al films, Fourier filtering is illustrated as a useful technique for correcting the artefacts. Taguchi optimization is shown to determine the optimal scan rate, scan size, integral and proportional gains in minimizing the size and number of artefacts at the imaging stage. The correction technique is shown to improve the morphological information of the AFM images while the Taguchi method is effective for determining the best imaging conditions for AFM analysis.