With the patented alphaControl WITec has introduced a completely new approach to controlling Scanning Probe Microscopes, achieving the best possible results with extremely low noise levels.

alphaControl uses a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to implement the SPM controller and all digital controlling tasks, providing unrivalled data processing speed by computing all SPM control tasks in parallel within a single chip. To make full use of the advantages of the FPGA architecture, the main controller functionality of the alphaControl is implemented in the form of a “system-on-a-chip” within one single powerful and in-system re-programmable FPGA. This allows true parallel execution of all controlling tasks with response times of down to a few nanoseconds. At the same time, the full 32 bit digital design guarantees the best possible noise and drift performance .

Another key feature introduced with the alphaControl is the TrueScan^TM functionality. While standard closed-loop scanners can only account for static positioning errors of the probe, the TrueScan technique for the first time allows minimization of dynamic positioning errors. This is achieved by reading the actual scan-stage position and using this information to correct the acquired SPM probe data.