The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 11, 2003
Filed:
Jan. 26, 2001
Klaus Knupfer, Essingen, DE;
Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung, Heidenheim-Brenz, DE;
Abstract
The invention is directed to a scanning system having one or several deflectable probe tips which are excited to oscillation at or near their resonant frequency. A saturation amplifier ( ) is provided for detecting and measuring the phase shift between the excitation signal and the oscillation carried out by the probe tip. The saturation amplifier ( ) generates a rectangular signal from the incoming sinusoidally-shaped signal ( ) while exactly maintaining the time-dependent position of the zero crossovers of the signal. The detection system, which is required for each probe tip, thereby acquires a very simple configuration of few commercially available components. Saturation amplified rectangular signals exclusively form the basis for the further evaluation. For this reason, a substantial independence of the signal intensity of the oscillation signal is ensured.