The Mad360™ is a compact precision rotational stage. The rotational motion is bidirectional and continuous 360°. Minimum rotational steps of 1 milliradian and capable of speeds up to 20 rotations/second, the Mad360™ is a versatile motion control device.

Mad City Labs recently announced the release of the MCL-NSOM, a versatile near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM). The MCL-NSOM is an aperture NSOM built on Mad City Labs RM21™ inverted optical microscope, which allows users to convert to aperture-less NSOM, AFM and fluorescence optical microscopy.

Mad City Labs is the only nanopositioning company showing real-world experimental verification of <50-pm closed-loop step-resolution.

Moving from micron-level to nanoscale-level research forces researchers to better understand their own experiments, as well as their own actions’ contributions to passive factors that undermine precision. With this understanding comes recognition that simple modifications to an experiment or instrumentation can assist in achieving their precision goals without the intervention of additional processing.

Atomic force microscopes are ideal for nanomechanical characterization, bringing utility to nanoscopy applications and excelling in conditions where low light presents challenges or sample integrity is vital.

The MadPLL® is digital phase lock loop controller designed for use with Mad City Labs nanopositioning systems as part of a DIY resonant probe atomic force microscope (AFM). MadPLL® includes AFMView™2 software, probe boards and sensor amplifier. The supplied software features automated setup, configuration control, auto-Q calculation and automatic parasitic capacitance compensation (PCC) control.

The Mad City Labs SPM etch kit is designed allow users to create a sharp tungsten tip suitable for scanning probe microscopy. The instrumentation allows the user to attach a tungsten wire to a quartz tuning fork and electrochemically etch the wire. 

This app note presents data demonstrating the Nano-MTA2's ability to take extremely small steps of 25 nanoradians and for these steps to be discerned by an external measurement. This performance is possible due to the low noise and high-resolution capabilities of PicoQ® sensors.

Shattered silicon wafers can produce shards of silicon that terminate in sharp tips suitable for AFM use. The simplicity and low cost of this method makes it a viable alternative to using etched tungsten tips. The SPM Etch Kit can be used to attach shard of silicon to the tuning fork to produce a tuning fork tip. This application note assumes that the SPM etch kit is assembled and ready for use.

This application note describes how to prepare a probe for an AFM scan in liquids using a tuning fork probe. The note describes how the process utilizes a “diving bell” approach to protect the probe and how to fabricate the diving bell using the Mad City Labs diving bell kit.

An atomic force microscope (AFM) can be built using Mad City Labs products along with other off-the-shelf components. This application note describes the construction of a fully automated AFM with the addition of a camera with a coaxial illuminator to view the tip approach.