| 摘要 |
This invention concerns scanning probe microscopes and related instruments ("SPMs") when used to investigate or measure large samples whose size is a multiple of the typical operational scanning area of an SPM, say 150x150µm at most. To avoid frequent readjustments or other time-consuming human interaction and errors when focusing the SPM, a multi-step, automated method for the SPM-scanning of large samples is disclosed, comprising a "coarse", i.e. low resolution, non-SPM scanning step adapted to scan a large sample and providing an integral map of the sample, followed by an evaluation step identifying "interesting" points or areas of the sample, which points or areas are then subjected to a focused "fine" scanning step by the SPM with high resolution. The associated apparatus provides the means to execute this novel three-step process. |
