1622 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 19, NO.

6, NOVEMBER 2011

Directional Repetitive Control of a Metrological AFM

Roel J. E. Merry, Michael J. C. Ronde, René van de Molengraft, K. Richard Koops, and Maarten Steinbuch

Abstract—Atomic force microscopes (AFMs) are used for sample

imaging and characterization at nanometer scale. In this work, we
consider a metrological AFM, which is used for the calibration of
transfer standards for commercial AFMs. The metrological AFM
uses a three-degree-of-freedom (DOF) stage to move the sample
with respect to the probe of the AFM. The repetitive sample to-
pography introduces repetitive disturbances in the system. To sup-
press these disturbances, repetitive control (RC) is applied to the
imaging axis. A rotated sample orientation with respect to the ac-
tuation axes introduces a nonrepetitiveness in the originally fully
repetitive errors and yields a deteriorated performance of RC. Di-
rectional repetitive control (DRC) is introduced to align the axes of
the scanning movement with the sample orientation under the mi-
croscope. Experiments show that the proposed directional repeti-
tive controller significantly reduces the tracking error as compared
to standard repetitive control.
Index Terms—Atomic force microscopy, learning control sys-
tems, motion control, nanotechnology, piezoelectric devices.
I. INTRODUCTION
TOMIC FORCE microscopes (AFMs) are widely used
A for the investigation of samples at a nanometer resolution.
The AFM, invented in 1986 by Binning, Quate, and Gerber [1],
uses an atomically sharp probe to scan the surface of a sample
under the microscope. Applications include the imaging of (bi-
ological) samples [2]–[4], characterization of materials [5], and
nano-fabrication [6].
In this paper, we consider a metrological AFM (see Fig. 1),
which is used for the calibration of transfer samples for commer-
cial AFMs. For calibration purposes, accuracy of the measure-
ments is more important than the scanning speed. However, to
limit the influence of changing operating conditions (e.g., tem-
perature, humidity, or drift) on the measurement uncertainty,
the scan time should be limited, i.e., a higher scan speed is re-
quired. The metrological AFM employs a piezo stack driven
three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) stage. The sample is moved
in the scanning -, -axes and the sample topography is mea-
sured in the imaging -axis.
In [7], we applied decentralized control on all 3-DOFs of
the metrological AFM combined with a hysteresis feedforward.
The experimental results clearly illustrated the repetitive nature
Manuscript received April 28, 2010; revised September 05, 2010; accepted
October 10, 2010. Manuscript received in final form November 04, 2010. Date
of publication December 13, 2010; date of current version September 16, 2011.
This work was supported by NanoNed, a national nanotechnology program co-
ordinated by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. Recommended by Asso-
ciate Editor R. Moheimani.
R. J. E. Merry, M. J. C. Ronde, M. J. G. van de Molengraft, and M. Steinbuch
are with the Control Systems Technology Group, Department of Mechanical
Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The
Netherlands (e-mail: r.j.e.merry@tue.nl).
K. R. Koops is with the VSL Dutch Metrology Institute, 2629 JA Delft, The
Netherlands.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2010.2091642
1063-6536/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
Fig. 1. Metrological AFM.
of the disturbances introduced by the repetitive sample topog-
raphy of the transfer standards and by the scanning movement.
To further increase the performance of the metrological AFM,
we focus in this paper on the application of repetitive control to
suppress the repetitive disturbances introduced by the repeating
scanning movement and the repetitive structure of the sample.
In many AFMs, the sample positioning is currently done in
an open-loop manner, whereas some AFMs use sensors for the
sample positioning in feedback [8], [9]. The operation of AFMs
in constant height mode requires no feedback control for the
imaging axis after bringing the sample and cantilever in con-
tact. Feedback control can be applied to the imaging -direction
when the AFM is operated in constant force mode or dynamical
tapping mode, which can improve the imaging results [2].
Learning control is only applicable to systems that perform
repetitive tasks and have a repetitive tracking error. The pro-
posed directional repetitive control (DRC) method in this paper
is applicable to a subset of these problems, namely to systems
in which the repetitive errors are repetitive in a rotated coor-
dinate frame with respect to the actuation axes. We show that
for this subset of systems an improved performance can be ob-
tained. Another class of applications in which the proposed DC
method is expected to be applicable are 2-DOF pick-and-place
systems that have a rotated printed circuit board with respect to
the manipulator.
In the literature, data-based learning control techniques have
been applied to AFMs and piezo scanners. In [10], inversion-
based iterative learning control (ILC) is applied to compensate
for the dynamic coupling from the scanning - and -axes to the
imaging -axis in a piezo tube scanner. The hysteresis effects
in the piezo scanners of AFMs are compensated using ILC in
[11]–[13]. In the imaging -direction, a one-scan delay feedfor-
ward controller can be used to improve the performance under
the assumption that two adjacent scan lines are quite similar
[4], [14], [15]. The same assumption is made for the application
of ILC to the imaging -direction in [16]. ILC requires iden-
tical initial conditions at the beginning of each iteration. For the
continuous scanning setpoint profiles over different lines in the

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 19, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2011
TABLE I
RESOLUTION AND rms VALUES OF THE NOISE FOR THE DIFFERENT SENSORS
AFM, the initial conditions over different scan lines (iterations)
are not guaranteed. Therefore, we use repetitive control (RC) in
this paper to suppress the repetitive disturbances of the scanning
movement and the sample topography of the transfer standards.
Although both ILC and RC are based on similar ideas, the de-
sign and application are clearly different. ILC requires identical
initial conditions every iteration and is an inherent feedforward
technique, whereas the equal initial conditions are not required
for RC, which acts in feedback and can thus affect the time-do-
main stability. Sometimes it is wrongfully posed that RC is not
implementable in real time [17].
In [18], RC has been successfully applied to the lateral scan-
ning directions of a scanning probe microscope. In this paper,
we show the real-time applicability of RC to the imaging -axis
of the metrological AFM. Generally, the sample orientation is
not perfectly aligned with the lateral scanning axes. This causes
the normally repetitive sample topography to become nonrepet-
itive during subsequent scan lines. An extension of the general
RC method is proposed, in which the reference and controller
axes are aligned with the orientation of the sample topography
under the AFM. In the adjusted RC method, referred to as DRC,
the scanning axes are rotated to correspond with the orientation
of the sample under the metrological AFM. Experiments show
the performance improvement of DRC in comparison with stan-
dard RC for the imaging -axis.
This paper is organized as follows. The metrological AFM,
its control architecture, and the model identification will be dis-
cussed in Section II. The feedback control design is the subject
of Section III. DRC will be presented in Section IV. The results
of the experiments with DRC are contained in Section V. Fi-
nally, conclusions are drawn in Section VI.
II. METROLOGICAL AFM
The metrological AFM, shown in Fig. 1, consists of a
Topometrix AFM head, a 3-DOF piezo-stack-driven stage, and
a ZYGO laser interferometer to measure the stage position in
all three DOFs. The optics and lasers of the interferometers
are projected to mirrors on the stage of the AFM. The lasers
are aligned such that the laser spots in all DOFs intersect at
the tip of the cantilever, thus minimizing Abbe errors [19].
The deflection of the cantilever in the AFM head is measured
by an optical sensor, consisting of a laser and photodetector.
The measurements of the ZYGO laser interferometer in all
DOFs are traceable to the standard of length. The resolution
and root-mean-square (rms) values of the standstill noise with
decoupled piezo actuators are given for all sensors in Table I.
The rms values of the noise are much larger than the measure-
ment resolution due to the external disturbances acting on the
metrological AFM.
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1623
Fig. 2. Schematic representation of the metrological AFM and the feedback
control.
A. Control Architecture
A schematic representation of the metrological AFM and the
feedback control architecture is shown in Fig. 2. For clarity, the
flexure mechanism and the mirrors on the stage are omitted. For
the application of feedback control, the voltages to the piezo
stack actuators , , are used together with the
ZYGO laser interferometers in the scanning -directions and
the output of the optical sensor in the imaging -direction.
The output can be translated to nanometers using the sensi-
tivity of the cantilever and the optical sensor as 1 V 20.83 nm.
The tip of the cantilever is controlled in constant force mode
while the stage moves the sample with respect to the cantilever
in all three DOFs. In this way, the orientation of the tip compared
with the sample topography remains constant, thus minimizing
Abbe errors.
The output of the ZYGO laser interferometer in the -direc-
tion is only used to measure the height of the sample directly.
Using the measurements of the ZYGO laser interferometer in
all three DOFs, an image of the sample topography can be con-
structed that is fully traceable to the standard of length.
B. Identification
The system with input and output
is defined as
(1)
In previous work (see [7]), we performed a full nonparametric
MIMO identification of the system together with an analysis
of the amount of coupling between the different axes. The
magnitudes of the measured nonparametric frequency response
functions (FRFs) of (1) are shown in Fig. 3. This FRF is
measured under closed-loop conditions, by measuring the
closed-loop sensitivity and the process
sensitivity while sequentially exciting one of the axes by
1624
Fig. 3. Bode magnitude plots of the measured FRF (gray) and the parametric
model (black).
a zero-mean white noise signal [20]. Then, follows from
. During the identification process, the hys-
teresis effects of the system are compensated to a large extent
by the feedback controller. The resonance peaks at 124 and
126 Hz in and , respectively, represent two different
modes despite their close frequency location [21]. Using the
frequency-dependent relative gain array (RGA) [22], the cou-
pling between the different axes is assessed. The system can be
considered to be decoupled for controller design purposes for
frequencies 100 Hz [7], [23].
For feedback controller and learning filter design purposes,
a low-order model of the system is designed. For the diag-
onal terms, only the first resonance peak is included, resulting
in a second-order model, representing the mass of the stage,
which is connected to the fixed world through the combined
stiffness of the piezo stack actuators and the flexure mechanism.
The off-diagonal terms are modeled by constants, representing
a static coupling between the axes, e.g., as introduced by align-
ment errors. Since the off-diagonal terms are not used for the
SISO feedback controller and/or learning filter design, the con-
stant terms in the off-diagonal terms are only included to com-
plete the model of the system . The gains of the off-diagonal
terms are chosen to match the magnitude of the measured FRF
in the frequency range of the desired bandwidth of 10 Hz. Some
off-diagonal terms have a minus sign in order to let the phase
correspond to the phase at low frequencies in the measured FRF
(gray line in Fig. 3). The fitted model equals
where
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 19, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2011
The Bode magnitude plot of is shown in Fig. 3 by the black
line. It can be seen that the model accurately describes the dc
gains and first main resonance peak of the diagonal terms. The
small resonances and resonances at higher frequencies are not
taken into account in the model in order to keep the model order
as low as possible. Furthermore, since a high-frequency roll-off
will be enforced, these resonances are not considered to be rel-
evant for the controller synthesis. The off-diagonal terms show
a good correspondence with the measured FRF around the de-
sired control bandwidth of 10 Hz.
III. FEEDBACK CONTROL DESIGN
Since the RGA shows that the axes of the metrological AFM
can be considered decoupled for controller design for frequen-
cies up to 100 Hz, a decentralized controller is designed for each
axis separately using loop-shaping techniques [24] as
, where
Using the internal model principle, a double integrator is used
in the controllers of the - and -directions in order to track the
constant velocity setpoints without steady-state errors. A lead
filter is added to create phase margin around the bandwidth
frequency. Finally, a second-order low-pass filter is added to
enforce high-frequency roll-off. In the -direction, step-shaped
disturbances are introduced by the transfer sample. Using
the internal model principle, a single integrator is used in the
controller in the -direction to suppress the step-shaped distur-
bances. Since only a single integrator is used in the -direction,
no lead filter is required since already enough phase margin
is present around the bandwidth frequency. To obtain a larger
high-frequency roll-off, a second-order low-pass filter is added.
The crossover frequencies of each diagonal loop gain
, , , equal 16.7,
14.7, and 25.4 Hz. The loop gains can be further increased by
including a notch filter in the controllers of especially the -
and -directions. However, since the resonance frequencies
may shift due to position dependency of the 3-DOF stage, this
has not been done at this point.
The stability of the controlled MIMO system is evaluated
using the characteristic loci , defined as the eigen-
values of the open-loop frequency response. The system is
closed-loop stable since the characteristic loci do not encircle
the point ( 1,0). Notice, however, that the margins only indi-
cate stability with respect to a simultaneous parameter change
in all of the loops [22].
The nondiagonal parts of the plant can be considered as
an additive perturbation of the diagonal terms as
[see also Fig. 4(a)]. The stability of the system
with a decentralized controller can be evaluated using the
structured singular value [21], [25]. The diagonal closed-loop
transfer functions equal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 19, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2011 1625

Fig. 4. Plant representation with an additive perturbation and multiplicative

output perturbation. (a) Additive perturbation. (b) Output multiplicative pertur-
bation.

Fig. 6. Sample orientation with respect to the scanning axes x and y .

(a) Perfectly aligned. (b) Rotated.

DRC will be applied in this paper to the -axis only, since

a sample rotation is most likely to occur around this axis due
to the positioning of the sample on the stage. In this paper, a
triangular trajectory will be applied to the fast scanning -axis.
The slow scanning -axis has a constant velocity profile to move
from scan line to scan line.
For the application of RC, the disturbances need to be
fully repetitive. The sample topography introduces a perfectly
Fig. 5. Sufficient condition (3) for the system with the decentralized controller
K T
, ( ) (black) and  (gray).
repetitive disturbance over the different scan lines if the sample
orientation is perfectly aligned with the actuation directions,
as shown in Fig. 6(a). However, in general, especially on a
nanometer scale, the sample under the metrological AFM is
The interaction due to the nondiagonal terms of the plant can be
not perfectly aligned with the actuation directions. The largest
described as an output multiplicative perturbation as shown
rotation is expected in the positioning of the sample on the
in Fig. 4(b) such that
sample holder, i.e., a rotation around the -axis. The misalign-
(2) ment of the sample causes the disturbances introduced by the
sample topography to be nonrepetitive in time while scanning
If and are stable, a sufficient con- the sample in the - and -direction, as indicated in Fig. 6,
dition for stability of the MIMO system is where the actuation directions are indicated by the subscript
[21], [25]: and the rotated sample axes by the subscript . The sample is
rotated around the -axis over an angle of (rad) with respect
(3) to the actuation directions.
In this section, first, standard RC will be addressed briefly.
where are the maximum singular values and is the For an in-depth treatment of RC, see [29] and [30]. Next, DRC
structured singular value with respect to the block diagonal is introduced. DRC adjusts the scanning directions of the repet-
structure of . itive controller based on the orientation of the sample under the
Condition (3) is shown in Fig. 5 for the decentralized con- AFM.
troller , where the gray line represents the inverse of the
structured singular value and the three black lines the singular A. Repetitive Control
values of . It can be seen that condition (3) is satisfied for
all frequencies, i.e., the decentralized controller stabilizes the In the -direction, the repetitive controller is combined
MIMO system. with the decentralized controller of the -axis, described
in Section III. Fig. 7 shows a block diagram of a feedback
IV. LEARNING CONTROL controlled system with RC added. For the moment, consider
the matrix , i.e., , , and . In
The repetitive sample topography, which is typical for Fig. 7, represents the system dynamics, the feedback
transfer standards for the metrological AFM, introduces repet- controller, and the repetitive controller,
itive disturbances in the system for subsequent scan lines. respectively. The signal contains the repetitive disturbances
These disturbances can be asymptotically suppressed using acting on the system.
RC [26]–[28]. RC can only be applied to systems that perform The repetitive controller in the -direction follows
repetitive tasks and have a repetitive tracking error. In the from the transfer function from the error to the output
metrological AFM, RC can be applied to both the fast scanning as
direction and the imaging direction since these axes have a
repetitive reference trajectory (triangular) and a repetitive
external disturbance (transfer sample), respectively. (4)

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1626 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 19, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2011
Fig. 7. Block diagram of the feedback controlled system with RC added.
where is the learning filter with a phase delay of samples,
is the robustness filter with a phase delay of samples, and
is the number of samples equal to the length of the repetitive
period. With the repetitive controller , the modified sensi-
tivity, describing the effect of the repetitive disturbances on
the tracking error , equals
(5)
where the modifying sensitivity function is [31]
(6)
in which the complementary sensitivity
. For SISO systems, the closed-loop system with RC
is stable if the original sensitivity is
asymptotically stable and if the following convergence criterion
is met for all frequencies:
(7)
The criterion (7) is a sufficient condition for stability of SISO
systems with RC and is derived using the small gain theorem
[22].
To show the applicability of DRC, we will restrict ourselves
in this paper to the SISO case. For MIMO systems, a framework
for the synthesis of MIMO repetitive controllers is presented in
[32], which is based on the internal model principle. In a MIMO
framework, the stability can be evaluated using (7) with the
complementary sensitivity
and full transfer matrices for the robustness filter , learning
filter , and delays. An independent design of the learning filter
and feedback controller is not recommended in a MIMO
setting [32].
The learning filter compensates for the dynamics be-
tween the input and output of the repetitive controller, namely,
the complementary sensitivity . Therefore, ideally, the
learning filter equals . In case is strictly
proper or has nonminimum phase zeros, an approximation
is made to obtain a stable, proper learning
filter. The approximated learning filter can be obtained using
the zero-phase-error-tracking-control (ZPETC) method [33].
The filter provides robustness against modeling errors and
is designed such that the convergence criterion (7) holds. The
use of the filter also restricts the working principle of the
repetitive controllers in certain frequency bands [29]. If the filter
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is constructed to have a linear phase of samples, the
introduced phase delay of the filter can easily be compensated
for in the memory loop of samples, provided that [34].
B. DRC
The rotation of the sample under the microscope renders the
originally repetitive tracking errors over the various scan lines
to become nonrepetitive. This reduces the learning capabilities
and error reduction of standard RC. By rotating the scan trajec-
tory over the angle such that the scan lines are aligned with
the rotated axes , the sample disturbance becomes fully
repetitive again over the subsequent scan lines. The rotation of
the coordinate system to , as shown in Fig. 6(b),
can be described by the rotation matrix as
(8)
The rotation matrix satisfies the equality . The rota-
tion only involves a rotation in the plane of the sample, i.e., in
the scanning directions. Possible tilt of the sample caused by a
rotation around the axes and/or is not taken into account
in this analysis, but could be incorporated in a similar manner
with an additional rotation matrix.
The rotation is incorporated in the reference trajectories and
feedback loops of the different axes. The addition of the ro-
tation matrix around the feedback controller with RC, named
, does not affect the stability of the closed loop system since
the coordinate transformation is norm-invariant [21], [22]. How-
ever, the inclusion of the rotation matrix around improves
the system performance by aligning the controller coordinate
frame and its disturbance suppression properties with the direc-
tions of the main disturbances, being the reference trajectory
and the sample topography. The RC scheme with the rotated
axes is referred to as DRC. The directional part links to the axes
of movement, which are rotated such that the tracking error be-
comes fully repetitive despite the rotation of the sample under
the microscope.
C. Rotation Estimation
For the application of DRC, the sample orientation, i.e., the
angle , should be known. To determine the orientation, two line
scans are performed in the fast scanning -direction at different
constant positions . Under the assumption that the sample
structure is identical for the two scan lines, the orientation and
thus can be determined from the recorded sample heights
of the laser interferometer in the -direction. The number of
samples phase shift between the features of the two recorded
sample heights and is determined by calculating the
correlation as
(9)
where is the number of samples phase shift, and are
the mean values of the sample heights of the two line scans, re-
spectively, and denotes the expected value operator. The
correlation is maximal when the phase shifted sample heights
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 19, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2011 1627

are similar. The number of samples phase shift can be deter-

mined as

(10)

Using the scanning velocity (nm/s) and the sampling time

(s), the difference in distance between the sample features over
the scanning lines (nm) can be calculated as

(11)

The sample rotation angle can finally be calculated as

(12) Fig. 8. Complementary sensitivity T (gray) and learning filter L(z ) (black) in
the z -direction.

The accuracy of is dependent on the scanning velocity and

sampling frequency. To determine the orientation accurately,
the scanning speed for the two line scans should be chosen low
and a high sampling frequency is preferred.
The stage itself cannot be rotated under the sample. After
a sample has been placed under the microscope, always a
small rotation exists due to the limited alignment accuracy
of the sample. The procedure described above calculates the
rotation of the sample with respect to the axes of actuation.
If this rotation is known, it can be used to rotate the scanning
references accordingly.
Summarizing, the orientation of the sample can be obtained
in a five-step procedure given here.
Step 1) Perform a line scan in the fast scanning -direction
Fig. 9. Convergence criterion in the z -direction evaluated with the measured
at constant -position and record the sample height FRF, without the Q filter (gray) and with the Q filter (black).
,
Step 2) Perform a second line scan at a different constant
-position and record the sample height , a period time of 4 s. The -direction is controlled to a constant
Step 3) Determine the phase shift between the sample tip deflection. The controller sampling frequency for the ex-
heights using (10), periments equals 2 kHz. The repetitive period for the RC
Step 4) Determine the shift in position between the sample experiments is determined by the setpoint in the -direction
features using (11), and equals 8000 samples.
Step 5) Calculate the sample rotation angle from (12).
The sign of the angle follows from the relative phase dif- A. Filter Design
ference between the two measured sample heights . If the
measured sample topography has a phase lag compared to Since timing is crucial for the success of the repetitive con-
the measured topography , the angle has a positive sign and troller, a zero-phase error is required. Using a discrete model
vice versa. of the complementary sensitivity in the -direction and the
The sample rotation calculated using the measured sample ZPETC method [33], the learning filter is derived as a
heights is affected by the presence of nonrepetitive distur- proper, stable approximation of the inverse complementary sen-
bances, e.g., by external disturbances. To reduce the influence sitivity, i.e., . The Bode diagrams of the com-
of the disturbances on , more line scans at constant -posi- plementary sensitivity function and learning filter in
tions can be performed. Averaging of the different obtained an- the -direction are shown in Fig. 8. It can be seen that the phase
gles of two subsequent line scans reduces the influence of the of the learning filter is an exact inverse of the complementary
non-repetitive disturbances. sensitivity function. The magnitude of the learning filter approx-
imates the inverse complementary sensitivity very well, but has
a slight deviation in amplitude at high frequencies in order to
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
obtain a stable and proper filter .
This section contains the results of the experiments with RC The convergence criterion (7) is plotted in Fig. 9 using the
and DRC applied to the imaging -direction. measured FRF data with and without the filter. The con-
For the experiments, a constant velocity setpoint of 125 vergence criterion evaluated without filter (gray line in Fig. 9)
nm/s is used for the slow scanning -direction. In the fast exceeds 0 dB for frequencies 215 Hz. To guarantee sta-
scanning -direction, a triangular-shaped trajectory over a bility of the RC scheme and to restrict the modified sensitivity
range of 25 m with a velocity of 25 m/s is used, i.e., with (5) to 10 dB, a low-pass FIR filter with 200 taps and a

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1628 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 19, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2011
Fig. 10. Measured sample topographies z (left column) and tracking errors e
(right column) for iterations k=2 (solid, black), k =5(solid, dark gray),
k = 10 = 15
(solid, light gray) and k (dashed, black) with RC for rotations
 = 00 22: rad (top) and  = 00 15
: rad (middle) and with DRC (bottom).
cutoff frequency of 50 Hz is used. With the low-pass robustness
filter , the convergence criterion (7) is fulfilled as shown in
Fig. 9 by the black solid line.
B. Results DRC
In order to show the applicability of the proposed DRC
method and the effect of a rotated sample, the sample is inten-
tionally rotated under the metrological AFM at two different
angles (rad). The measured sample topographies of different
scan lines for the two experiments with a rotated sample are
shown in Fig. 10 in the two top-left figures. The shift in the
sample topography in between the subsequent scan lines is
clearly visible. The smaller phase shift in the measured po-
sitions of the second experiment indicates a smaller
rotation of the sample in this experiment. In the top left axis
of Fig. 10, it can be seen that the measured sample topography
of has a phase lead compared to the measured sample
topography of . This indicates that the angle has a
negative sign. Using the procedure described in Section IV-C,
the sample orientations are determined as 0.22 rad
and 0.15 rad, respectively. The sample topography is
identified in both the rising and falling parts of the triangular
trajectory in the -direction. For readability only the results of
the rising part of the triangular trajectory are shown.
The tracking errors of the RC experiments with the rotated
sample over rad contain a phase shift and large oscillations
for the various scan lines, as shown in the top right figures in
Fig. 10. Note that the tracking errors do not directly link to the
measured sample topographies since these are measured using
the laser interferometer in the -direction whereas the setpoint
for the control loop in the -direction is constant. However, they
are measured during the same experiments.
The rms values of the errors are shown in Fig. 11(a) as func-
tion of the iteration number. Despite of the phase shifts RC is
still able to reduce the tracking error. However, the rms value
of the tracking error for 0.22 rad is larger than for
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Fig. 11. Convergence plot and cumulative PSD of the errors at iteration k = 15
for the experiments with RC and  = 0.22 rad (light gray) and  = 0.15 rad
(dark gray) and with DRC (black). (a) Error convergence. (b) Cumulative PSD
of e at k = 15 .
TABLE II
rms VALUES OF THE ERRORS AT ITERATIONS k AND k=1 = 15 FOR THE
RC AND DRC EXPERIMENTS
0.15 rad. So, larger rotations lead to larger nonrepeti-
tive errors and thus a reduced error reduction by RC. After con-
vergence, the rms values of the errors of the various iterations
fluctuate due to the presence of nonrepetitive disturbances.
If DRC is applied, the measured sample topography over the
different scan lines does not show a phase shift, as shown in the
bottom left axis of Fig. 10. The measured tracking errors of the
different iterations, shown in the bottom right axis of Fig. 10,
are only present at the time instants where a transition in the
measured sample topography is detected. With DRC, no phase
shift or large oscillations at other time instants are present in the
tracking errors. The rms values of the errors of the different iter-
ations are shown in Fig. 11(a) by the black line. DRC reduces the
tracking error for a rotated sample over 0.22 rad by
44% from 10.42 nm to 5.86 nm.
For a rotated sample over 0.15 rad, the error is re-
duced by 33%. For all iterations, the rms values of the errors
are smaller for DRC than for RC with a rotated sample. The
rms values of the errors at the iterations and of
the experiments with RC applied to the rotated sample topogra-
phies over 0.22 rad and 0.15 rad and with DRC
are given in Table II. Note that the errors at iteration are
only influenced by the feedback controller , i.e., the repeti-
tive controllers are not active during the first iteration since no
repetitive error is available yet.
The remaining tracking error after convergence is determined
by the magnitude of the nonrepetitive errors. The fluctuation is
caused by different magnitudes of the nonrepetitive errors in
the various iterations. Sampling of the repetitive error signals
introduces an additional nonrepetitive part if the period time of
the nonrepetitive errors is not an integer multiple of the sampling
time. This holds for both standard RC and DRC.
In Fig. 11(b), the square root of the CPSDs of the tracking
errors of RC with the rotated sample and of DRC are shown for
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 19, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2011
iteration . The reduction in tracking error by DRC can
clearly be seen. For frequency , the square root of the
CPSDs converge to the rms values of the tracking errors.
VI. CONCLUSION
The repetitive sample topography of the transfer samples for
the metrological AFM results in repetitive tracking errors in sub-
sequent line scans, which can be reduced using learning control
techniques such as repetitive control. Even a small rotation of
the sample with respect to the lateral scanning axes of the AFM
introduces nonrepetitive disturbances, which limit the perfor-
mance of RC. In this paper, a novel DRC scheme has been pre-
sented, which aligns the actuation axes with the sample orien-
tation. This renders the disturbance introduced by the sample
topography fully repetitive again over subsequent scan lines.
The DRC scheme incorporates a coordinate transformation
of the setpoint generator and feedback controller in order to
align the scanning axes with the sample orientation under the
microscope. The sample orientation, i.e., the rotation angle, is
obtained using the measured sample topographies of a couple
of line scans. With DRC an improved learning performance is
obtained compared to standard RC.
The experimental results of the imaging -axis of the metro-
logical AFM show the applicability of the proposed directional
repetitive controller. Even for small sample rotations, DRC re-
duces the tracking error significantly compared to a standard
repetitive controller.
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