REMOVING DRIFT FROM SCANNING PROBE MICROSCOPE IMAGES OF PERIODIC SAMPLES

Thermal drift is frequently encountered when imaging with scanning pro be microscopes. The drift skews real space images and distorts the rec iprocal space lattice vectors. A settling time of up to 2 h is general ly required to achieve relatively drift free images at the high magnif ications needed for molecular or atomic resolution. We demonstrate a s imple method to extract accurate lattice parameters from periodic samp les which compensates for drift to first order (approximately constant drift rate), dramatically shortening the necessary waiting time. The method is based on averaging the apparent reciprocal lattice vectors c orresponding to consecutive scans obtained in opposite scanning direct ions. (C) 1998 American Vacuum Society.