afspm: A framework for manufacturer-agnostic automation in scanning probe microscopy

• Nicholas J. Sullivan,
• Julio J. Valdés,
• Kirk H. Bevan and
• Peter Grutter

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2026, 17, 653–667, doi:10.3762/bjnano.17.45

• interfaces types. An automated experiment was run to ensure overall running beyond integration testing. Keywords: atomic force microscopy; automation; manufacturer-agnostic; scanning probe microscopy; software framework; Introduction In scanning probe microscopy (SPM), an atomically sharp tip is scanned

• , named afspm (after Automation Framework for SPM). This framework serves as a manufacturer-agnostic foundation with which automation processes can be developed; for example, the system developed in [13], a specific application demonstrated on a single SPM, can – once implemented in this framework – be

• , the Bluesky data model may serve as a useful approach for organizing experimental data and metadata for later search and retrieval. The development of automated tasks within a manufacturer-agnostic framework enables code sharing among the SPM community. This framework is a reasonable first step toward