Abstract
We report a wear-resistant ultrananocrystalline (UNCD) diamond tip integrated onto a heated atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever and UNCD tips integrated into arrays of heated AFM cantilevers. The UNCD tips are batch-fabricated and have apex radii of approximately 10 nm and heights up to 7 μm. The solid-state heater can reach temperatures above 600 °C and is also a resistive temperature sensor. The tips were shown to be wear resistant throughout 1.2 m of scanning on a single-crystal silicon grating at a force of 200 nN and a speed of 10 μm s-1. Under the same conditions, a silicon tip was completely blunted. We demonstrate the use of these heated cantilevers for thermal imaging in both contact mode and intermittent contact mode, with a vertical imaging resolution of 1.9 nm. The potential application to nanolithography was also demonstrated, as the tip wrote hundreds of polyethylene nanostructures.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 495302 |
Journal | Nanotechnology |
Volume | 23 |
Issue number | 49 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 14 2012 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Bioengineering
- General Chemistry
- General Materials Science
- Mechanics of Materials
- Mechanical Engineering
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering