Ch. 1. System Overview Sec. 1.3. The Igor Pro Software Environment
Engage Panel (Ctrl + 8) This panel controls the entire process of the cantilever approach to the sample.
Its three tabs control:
Approach Motorized approach of cantilever and microscope objective toward the sample.
Detector Centering of reflected light beam (laser or SLD) onto the optical detector.
Prefs Preferences for the engage process such as approach speed and approach step size.
Real Time Image Display This is an example of an image window, in this case displaying the individual
lines of the sample topography as the cantilever moves left to right over the sample. There is usually
one such window per active tab in the ‘Master Channel Panel’ (Lower left hand window). The amplitude
and phase data windows are to the right of this clipped screen shot. While this panel is primarily a data
display, right clicking with the mouse can activate various commands such as ‘Zoom’ and ‘Translate’.
The white area at the bottom of this window shows a real time oscilloscope view of the most recent line
of image data.
Scope Graph This oscilloscope view shows a graph of the most current scan line. Both trace and retrace
can be selected on the ‘Master Channel Panel’.
Q Oops! I accidentally closed one of the control panel windows. How do I get it back?
A You can reactivate the panels via AFM Controls in the top menu bar.
A few other things of note are:
Menu Bar Along the top of the screen. There are many more controls which can be invoked by items in
the menu bar. Menu items to the left are typically standard Igor Pro items, with some Asylum Research
functionality. Items to the right of “help” are exclusively SPM related. In particular, the AFM Controls
menu item is a complete list of all real time controls and the AFM Analysis menu item is a complete list
of all offline controls.
Status Bar Along the bottom of the screen. Icon controls relate to the status of connected instrument
components. The low level software version is also displayed.
We won’t dwell on the purpose of all these controls but will proceed with the general process of imaging
a sample. This will necessarily cover the most pertinent software controls.
Tip
Note that nearly each individual item in the software control panels has a small
question mark button next to it. Click the button to read the relevant parts of the
software help file.
support.asylumresearch.com Page 9
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