Interferometer Scanning Microwave Microscopy: Performance Evaluation

A systematic and quantitative comparison of electrical detection systems in scanning microwave microscopy is reported. Scanning microwave microscopy (SMM) is capable of investigating nanoscale electrical properties with high accuracy over a broad frequency range of 1-20 GHz. However, due to the pass...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on nanotechnology 2017-11, Vol.16 (6), p.991-998
Main Authors: Tuca, Silviu-Sorin, Kasper, Manuel, Kienberger, Ferry, Gramse, Georg
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Hybrid coupler
Impedance
Impedance matching
interferometer
low noise amplifier (LNA)
Low-noise amplifiers
Scanning microwave microscopy
Sensitivity
SMM
Transmission line measurements
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Summary:A systematic and quantitative comparison of electrical detection systems in scanning microwave microscopy is reported. Scanning microwave microscopy (SMM) is capable of investigating nanoscale electrical properties with high accuracy over a broad frequency range of 1-20 GHz. However, due to the passive matching network only discrete frequencies can be used every 1 GHz with varying signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Here we study in detail the impedance matching mechanism using an interferometric network where a two-port measurement is implemented with a reduction of the trace noise due to signal subtraction. The interferometer setup shows superior performance resulting in a 2-8 fold increased SNR with respect to the standard shunt solution, in addition to stable broadband performance over the full frequency range. We perform a comparison of the electrical sensitivity obtained using a direct connection from the network analyser to probe, the typically implemented shunt-resonator impedance matching network, and the proposed interferometer setup. The interferometer SMM allows us also for calibrated impedance measurements, which we demonstrate on Tobacco mosaic viruses with 18-nm diameter, with a capacitance resolution of 0.67 attoFarads at 10 ms acquisition time per pixel.
ISSN:1536-125X
1941-0085
DOI:10.1109/TNANO.2017.2725383