I measure the step height of various films including metals and organics using AFM, but this skipping issue (or jumping, not sure what it is called) only occurs on Ag films. I have verified several things to resolve this issue such as improving the adhesion to the substrate by using another metal, checked the cleanliness of the film, changed the AFM tip, lowered the set point, scan rate, angle, worked around anything related to scan parameters, but none of them were helpful. Now I think this issue is material dependent, so I wonder if anyone else has experienced this with Ag films?
Dear Roksana,
these stripes are quite common scanning error coming from local fault of the closed loop. They can be removed by software (e.g. Gwyddion).
T.
Dear Roksana Bavand ,
it looks like the stripes comes from jumps in the z-position of your scanner. Normally if you apply realtime flatten to the image, you should not see them. As Tomáš Halenkovič mentions you can remove them easily by post processing. If you still see them with realtime flattening (1st order for example), then you could have some further issues.
Dear Roksana, did you used the contact mode? Silver is a soft material, so small amounts of silver may attach to your tip and eventually be detached again when scanning the surface, this may as well cause irregularities. Try to use non-contact modes of your AFM ... or substantially reduce the force! Hope this helps, keep us updated, Dirk
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