Development of A Haptic User Interface for Surface Sensing and Nanomanipulation Based on Atomic Force Microscope

The standard application of atomic force microscope (AFM) is observation with subnanometer resolution. As development of nano-tech, AFM has also become popular as a simple manipulation tool. We have proved that developing a haptic user interface (HUI) can significantly improve these functions of AFM. When going on observation, under the assistance of HUI, the user can not only observe surface characters through the scanning image, meanwhile, he can also "touch" the surface with a force proportional to the imaging signal on his hand, which help to deepen people\´s understanding to surface characters. HUI can work for surface sensing online or offline, as long as the imaging signals could be obtained. Changing the observation mode of AFM from only imaging to both imaging and sensing. When going on nanomanipulation, through HUI the user can not only feel the real-time operation force, furthermore he can directly control the tip motion of AFM. this significantly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of AFM based nanomanipulation.