Improve the Resolution of Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy Images

Abstract

Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) measures surface potential (SP) distribution of the sample surface by detecting the electrostatic force between probe and sample. Because electrostatic force is a long rang force, the obtained KPFM measurements are usually blurred reproductions of the true potential distributions of the sample surface. In this work, to reverse the blurring, a non-linear algorithm based on total variation (TV) regularization is used to reconstruct the KPFM measurements. The analysis on the deconvolution results indicate that the deconvoluted results demonstrate better resolution and lower noise level compare to the original measurements.