Analysis of oscillating microcantilever dynamics: A Floquet perspective

Dynamic mode atomic force microscopy provides high resolution in imaging biological samples, but it features a reduced scanning velocity. In this paper we investigate a recent scheme in which the cantilever gets excited by a feedback loop containing a saturation function. The proposed modality is then analyzed via Floquet theory and compared to the standard setup, showing better transient performance and elimination of some of the known drawbacks. The analysis results confirm preliminary experiments showing the effectiveness of this operating mode.