Automation of an atomic force microscope via Arduino Guerrero-Félix, Jesús Gerardo López-Miras, Javier Rodríguez Valverde, Miguel Ángel Moraila-Martínez, Carmen Lucía Fernández Rodríguez, Miguel Ángel Arduino Low-cost automation Atomic force microscope The Dimension 3000 AFM used in this work was kindly donated by Prof. Nicholas D. Spencer, and facilitated by Prof. Lucio Isa, and Dr. Shivaprakash N. Ramakrishna, from ETH-Zurich. We thank Prof. David Cuartielles for encouraging us to publish this work in this special issue on Arduino Science Hardware. We also thank Llorenc Mercadal Fernandez for frutiful discussions and ideas, and the BiblioMaker unit in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Granada for their help in 3D printing the gears used here. MAFR acknowledges support by the project PID2020-116615RA-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, and the EMERGIA grant with reference EMC21_00008 funded by Consejeria de Universidad, Investigacion e Innovacion de la Junta de Andalucia, and by FEDER "ERDF A way of making Europe". JGGF and CLMM acknowledge support from grant A1S35536 by Conacyt Mexico. The Atomic Force Microscopy is a very versatile technique that allows to characterize surfaces by acquiring topographies with sub-nanometer resolution. This technique often overcomes the problems and capabilities of electron microscopy when characterizing few nanometers thin coatings over solid substrates. They are expensive, in the half million dollar range for standard units, and therefore it is often difficult to upgrade to new units with improved characteristics. One of these improvements, motorization and automation of the measurements is very interesting to sample different parts of a substrate in an unattended way. Here we report a low cost upgrade under 60 $ to a Dimension 3000 AFM based on a control unit using an Arduino Leonardo. It enables to acquire dozens or hundreds of images automatically by mimicking keyboard shortcuts and interfacing the AFM PCI card. 2023-09-19T09:38:16Z 2023-09-19T09:38:16Z 2023-09 journal article J.G. Guerrero-Felix et al. Automation of an atomic force microscope via Arduino. HardwareX 15 (2023) e00447. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2023.e00447] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/84496 10.1016/j.ohx.2023.e00447 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional Elsevier