GOALI: Control of Broadband Acoustic-caused Vibration at Nanoscale: An Enabling Technology for Cleanroom Metrology

这个GOALI项目旨在创建一套动力学和控制工具，在原子力显微镜(AFM)中理解和对抗纳米级声学引起的机械振动。AFM是一种著名的独特仪器，用于研究纳米级的物体。具体地说，目标是消除AFM探头的声学引起的振动，以提高仪器的精度和效率。这项研究的成功将使原子力显微镜能够在洁净室环境中实现亚纳米级的计量精度，从而为确保半导体行业下一代纳/微制造的制造质量做出贡献。本工作中所学到的知识和技术可用于其他扫描探头的应用，如扫描电子显微镜和激光环形探测器。由此产生的用于对抗声学引起的探头振动的控制工具也将拓宽AFM在其他新兴应用中的应用；例如，它将允许研究人员将AFM与其他仪器(如光镊子和光学显微镜)相结合，以实现对活体生物样本的多功能测量和操作。该项目的教育活动包括为学生提供暑期实习、开发课程单元、为任职人数不足的学生开展招聘和留用活动，以及推广至K-12。该项目的动机是消除声学引起的机械振动，以实现在洁净室环境中进行亚纳米测量和校准时的高精度和高速度。具体的研究目标包括：建立一种数据驱动的、稳健的方法来准确估计和预测噪声引起的探头振动；建立一种在线迭代自适应的数据驱动的前馈-反馈控制方法来消除声学引起的探头振动；分析所提出的建模和振动估计的收敛和鲁棒性，以及所提出的数据驱动的前馈-反馈控制的收敛和性能；以及实验实现、测试和验证所提出的方法。通用原子力显微镜和半导体原子力显微镜的测试和验证将在两个设施--罗格斯大学的实验室和参与行业布鲁克的实验室设施--进行。

This Grant Opportunity for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) project aims to create a suite of dynamics and control tools to understand and combat acoustic-caused mechanical vibrations at nanoscale in atomic force microscope (AFM), a well-known and unique instrument used for studying objects at fractions of nano-meter scale. Specifically, the objective is to eliminate the acoustic caused vibrations of the AFM probe to enhance the instrument's accuracy and efficiency. Success of this research will enable AFM to achieve sub-nanometer metrological accuracy in cleanroom environment, thereby, contributing to ensure the fabrication quality of next-generation nano-/micro-fabrication in semiconductor industry. The knowledge and techniques learned in this work can be readily used in other scanning probe applications such as scanning electronic microscope and laser annular detector. The resulting control tools for combatting acoustic-caused probe vibration will also broaden the implementations of AFM in other emerging applications; for example, it will allow researchers to combine AFM with other instruments such as optical tweezer and optical microscope to enable multi-function measurement and manipulation of live biological samples. The educational activities of the project include summer internships for students, curriculum course module development, recruitment and retention activities for under-represented students, and outreach to K-12. The project is motivated by the need for eliminating acoustic-caused mechanical vibrations to enable high level of accuracy and speed in sub-nanometer measurement and calibration in cleanroom environment. The specific research goals include: creating a data-driven, robust approach to accurately estimate and predict the noise-caused probe vibration, creating a data-driven feedforward-feedback control approach with online iterative adaptation to cancel the acoustic-caused probe vibration, analyzing the convergence and robustness of the proposed modeling and vibration estimation, and the convergence and performance of the proposed data-driven feedforward-feedback control, and experimentally implementing, testing, and validating the proposed approach. The testing and validation will take place for general-purpose AFM as well as semiconductor-AFM at both facilities -- in the laboratory at Rutgers University and in laboratory facilities at Bruker, the participating industry.