Figure 9 shows unprocessed AFM images of a bare silicon wafer taken with the XE-system (a), and with a conventional AFM (b). Since the silicon wafer is atomically flat, most of the curvatures in the image are scanner-induced artifacts. Figure 9 (c) shows the cross section of the images in Figure 9 (a) and (b). Since the tube scanner has intrinsic background curvatures, the maximum out-of-plane motion is as much as 80 nm when the X-axis moves 15 μm. The XE scan system has less than 1nm of out-of-plane motion for the same scan range. Another advantage of the XE scan system is its Z-servo response. Figure 10 is an image of a porous polymer sphere (Styrene Divinyl Benzene), whose diameter is about 5 µm, taken with the XE-system in Non-Contact mode. Since the Z-servo response of the XE-system is very accurate, the probe can precisely follow the steep curvature of the polymer sphere as well as small porous surface structures without crashing or sticking to the surface. Figure 11 shows another example that demonstrates the high performance of the z-servo response with a flat background.

완전 비접촉 모드TM의 원자간 힘의 인력 구간에서는 팁-샘플간의 거리가 수 나노미터 수준에서 성공적으로 유지됩니다. 팁의 작은 진폭은 팁-샘플 상호작용을 최소화시키며 이것은 최상의 팁 보존과 극소량의 샘플 변형이라는 좋은 결과를 야기합니다.