The new FAST module: a portable and transparent add-on module for time-resolved investigations with commercial scanning probe microscopes

TL;DR

The paper introduces a redesigned, portable FAST module that significantly enhances the time resolution of commercial scanning probe microscopes, enabling real-time surface process investigations with improved performance and versatility.

Contribution

It presents a fully redesigned, portable FAST module compatible with both STMs and AFMs, featuring improved speed, user experience, and new capabilities like atom tracking.

Findings

Enhanced time resolution in SPMs enables real-time surface process studies.

Portability allows easy integration with various commercial microscopes.

New features include atom tracking mode for advanced investigations.

Abstract

Time resolution is one of the most severe limitations of scanning probe microscopies (SPMs), since the typical image acquisition times are in the order of several seconds or even few minutes. As a consequence, the characterization of dynamical processes occurring at surfaces (e.g. surface diffusion, film growth, self-assembly and chemical reactions) cannot be thoroughly addressed by conventional SPMs. To overcome this limitation, several years ago we developed a first prototype of the FAST module, an add-on instrument capable of driving a commercial scanning tunneling microscope (STM) at and beyond video rate frequencies. Here we report on a fully redesigned version of the FAST module, featuring improved performance and user experience, which can be used both with STMs and atomic force microscopes (AFMs), and offers additional capabilities such as an atom tracking mode. All the new features of the FAST module, including portability between different commercial instruments, are described in detail and practically demonstrated.