1) A scanning tunneling microscope equipped with capacitive sensors has been developed to measure the real-time X-Y position and correct for errors caused by piezoelectric actuator properties like hysteresis and nonlinearity.
2) The microscope uses a calibrated scanning stage with capacitive sensors that measure the actual X-Y position and provide feedback to dynamically adjust the piezo voltages to reach the desired scanning positions with minimal error.
3) This allows surfaces to be scanned geometrically accurately while correcting for drift and low-frequency vibrations in real time.