  Atomic force microscopes have proved to be fundamental research tools in many
situations where a gentle imaging process is required, and in a variety of
environmental conditions, such as the study of biological samples. Among the
possible modes of operation, intermittent contact mode is one that causes less
wear to both the sample and the instrument; therefore, it is ideal when imaging
soft samples. However, intermittent contact mode is not particularly fast when
compared to other imaging strategies. In this paper, we introduce three
enhanced control approaches, applied at both the dither and z-axis piezos, to
address the limitations of existing control schemes. Our proposed strategies
are able to eliminate different image artefacts, automatically adapt scan speed
to the sample being scanned and predict its features in real time. The result
is that both the image quality and the scan time are improved.
