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

这个学术联络与工业（GOALI）项目的赠款机会旨在创建一套动力学和控制工具，以了解和打击原子力显微镜（AFM）中纳米级的声学引起的机械振动，原子力显微镜是一种用于研究纳米级物体的着名和独特的仪器。具体地说，其目的是消除AFM探针的声学引起的振动，以提高仪器的精度和效率。该研究的成功将使AFM在洁净室环境中达到亚纳米级的加工精度，从而为确保半导体工业中下一代纳米/微米加工的加工质量做出贡献。本研究中所获得的知识和技术可以很容易地应用于其他扫描探针应用中，如扫描电子显微镜和激光环形探测器。由此产生的控制工具，用于打击声引起的探头振动也将扩大在其他新兴应用的AFM的实现，例如，它将允许研究人员联合收割机AFM与其他仪器，如光学镊子和光学显微镜，使多功能测量和操纵活的生物样品。该项目的教育活动包括学生暑期实习、课程模块开发、为代表性不足的学生开展招聘和保留活动，以及向K-12进行宣传。该项目的动机是消除声学引起的机械振动，以实现洁净室环境中亚纳米测量和校准的高精度和速度。具体研究目标包括：创建数据驱动的鲁棒性方法以准确地估计和预测噪声引起的探头振动，创建具有在线迭代自适应的数据驱动的前馈-反馈控制方法以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性和鲁棒性，以及所提出的数据驱动的前馈-反馈控制的收敛性和性能，并通过实验实现、测试和验证所提出的方法。测试和验证将在罗格斯大学的实验室和参与行业布鲁克的实验室设施中进行，用于通用AFM和自动化AFM。

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.