Height calibration of optical lever atomic force microscopes by simple laser interferometry

A new and simple interferometric method for height calibration of AFM piezo scanners is presented. Except for a small mirror no additional equipment is required since the fixed wavelength of the laser diode is used as a calibration standard. The calibration is appliable in the range between several ten nm and several μm. Besides vertical calibration many problems of piezo elements like hysteresis, nonlinearity, creep, derating, etc. and their dependence on scan parameters or temperature can be investigated.