Alcatera Inc. — Department of Defense STTR Phase II: A17A-T008

Description

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is a technique used to detect near-field interaction when a sample is rater-scanned by a probe. Example include atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning tunneling microscope (STM). It offers nanometric and atomic image resolution. In this field, an emerging technique, Near-Field Scanning Microwave Microscopy (SMM), utilizes microwave evanescent waves to attain the short-range interaction, which can provide extra quantitative measured data besides the nanometric images. However, existing systems are expensive, and usually limited to a single frequency measurement below 20GHz without exploiting the penetration capabilities of microwave, and are generally incompatible with liquid environments. These limitations are addressed by the proposed wideband 3D tomography SMM with sub-surface analysis capability. It focuses on a novel detection approach that can be extended to very high frequencies.