Modeling of Haptic Sensing of Nanolithography with an Atomic Force Microscope

This paper describes a virtual reality interface between human and the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), which allows the operator to perform nanomanipulation with an AFM tip in the virtual reality environment with haptic feedback. During operation, the tip-sample interaction forces and intermolecular forces between the tip and surface are modeled based on Lennard-Jones potential and JKR theory, respectively. Our objective is to provide a 3D virtual reality interface capable of displaying topography of surface for the users and allow them to predict the results for the manipulation.