Advanced flattening method for scanned atomic force microscopy images

This paper presents an advanced flattening method to precisely analyze nanostructures by using atomic force microscopy. Distortions caused by the slope of a sample and nonlinearities of the Z scanner can affect the height of the scanned image and make the scanned image difficult to use for quantitative analysis. We propose an advanced flattening method to flatten an image that does not require the user to be experienced. The distortions can be measured and systematically removed from a scanned image. The proposed method is able to substantially reduce both the artifacts caused by flattening and the inspection time using a scanned image.