Ultra-Short Cantilevers (USC)
After the commercialization of Arrow™ UHF in 2004 the NanoWorld R&D team in collaboration with nanotools GmbH started working on the development of a second generation of High Speed Scanning AFM probes increasing the range of application possibilities.
These new Ultra-Short Cantilevers (USC) for HS-AFM feature many different probe types. These include for example a version with a very high Resonance Frequency (up to 25 MHz) as well as another version which combines a high Resonance Frequency (1.5MHz) with a low Force Constant (0.6 N/m) as required for biological applications.
Many different cantilever and tip materials have been investigated and cantilevers with different dimensions have been fabricated and tested.
At present these investigations are divided into the following basic types:
1) Ultra-Short New Material Cantilevers (USC-NM)
Beta-testing phase, preparation for commercialization
2) Ultra-Short Silicon Nitride Cantilevers (USC-SiN)
First demonstrators realized
3) Ultra-Short Silicon Cantilevers (USC-Si)
First demonstrators realized
All these probe types feature the same Electron Beam Deposited (EBD) sharp tip manufactured by nanotools GmbH.
This tip is made of High Dense Carbon / Diamond Like Carbon (HDC / DLC).
As in High Speed AFM (HS-AFM) the tip can travel at a speed of a few mm/s in contact with the sample, tip wear becomes a very critical issue.
This problem has been solved by using a HDC / DLC tip which has a Young's modulus eight times higher than Silicon. This results in a much lower tip wear compared to a standard Silicon tip.
Moreover the hydrophobic properties of the HDC / DLC tip enable its use for biological applications where the interactions between the tip and the sample have to be as weak as possible in order to be non-destructive.