High Speed Imaging: Realizing The Gains Of Closed-Loop Velocity Control

Queensgate, a division of Prior Scientific Ltd., manufactures piezo-driven nanopositioning stages, piezo actuators and capacitive sensors. These provide core building blocks for cutting-edge scientific instrumentation and are used in diverse fields such as optics, microscopy and metrology. 

R&D efforts within Queensgate have yielded results that are likely to attract commercial interest from manufacturers of next-generation atomic force microscopes (AFMs), other scanning probe microscopy (SPM) systems, and confocal microscopy groups among others. 

In a study completed earlier this year by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL), new closed-loop velocity-control algorithms for the NanoScan controller were put through their paces.  Queensgate’s high-speed XY nanopositioning stage was used to capture AFM images at extremely high speeds with high resolution.    

The results are eye-catching: reliable capture of large-area, high-quality AFM images with nanometer spatial resolution – and all achieved in less than five minutes, rather than hours or days.