Complete information acquisition in dynamic force microscopy

Scanning probe microscopy has emerged as a primary tool for exploring and controlling the nanoworld. A critical part of scanning probe measurements is the information transfer from the tip–surface junction to the measurement system. This process reduces responses at multiple degrees of freedom of the probe to relatively few parameters recorded as images. Similarly, details of dynamic cantilever response at sub-microsecond time scales, higher-order eigenmodes and harmonics are lost by transitioning to the millisecond time scale of pixel acquisition. Hence, information accessible to the operator is severely limited, and its selection is biased by data processing methods. Here we report a fundamentally new approach for dynamic Atomic Force Microscopy imaging based on information–theory analysis of the data stream from the detector. This approach allows full exploration of complex tip–surface interactions, spatial mapping of multidimensional variability of material’s properties and their mutual interactions, and imaging at the information channel capacity limit.