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3D Modeling from AFM Measurements

Timothée Jost

Keywords

Sensor fusion, AFM measurement, geometric matching, micrometric 3D modeling

Purpose of the project

This project addresses the problem of building complete 3D micro-object models from measurements in the submicrometric range. As the relative positioning of the different views is not known in the case of AFM measurements - due to the random aspect of the orientation change between the different views - the presented approach proposes to use an a posteriori software registration procedure that aligns views by registering common overlapping parts. It relies on the sole intrinsic properties of the object geometry and does not require additional measurements.

Modeling quartz particles

The experiments consisted in measuring loose quartz particles measuring about 1-3 µm poured onto a substrate. Several single views from different particles have been obtained in both normal and reverse-image mode. Results showed that calibration of the AFM is required in order to obtain views that can be correctly matched.


A single AFM measurement	3D model reconstructed from several measurements

Fig. 1 Several AFM measurements (left) are combined to build up the 3D model of a micrometric cristal particle.

Also, three views of the substrate have been integrated together successfully. These experiments demonstrate, among others, the successful alignment of three AFM views of a Ni-polymer substrate (used to fix particles) by geometric matching.

References