Ultra-Short Silicon Nitride Cantilevers

Ultra-Short Silicon Nitride Cantilevers are available on demand as NANOSENSORS™ Special Development item.

Ultra-Short Silicon Nitride Cantilevers for High-Speed AFM (HS-AFM) combine very small AFM cantilevers made of silicon nitride which are designed for resonating at frequencies of up to 6 MHz and a very sharp and wear resistant High Density Carbon / Diamond Like Carbon (HDC / DLC) AFM tip.

• especially designed for high speed scanning applications
• cannot be used in all commercial SPMs and AFMs due to the small  dimensions of the AFM cantilevers
• AFM cantilever and AFM tip are supported by a single crystal silicon support chip
• no intrinsic stress and absolutely straight AFM cantilevers

AFM Cantilever

• rectangular AFM cantilever with rounded corners at the freestanding end     
• AFM cantilever made of silicon nitride

Support Chip

• dimensions of the support chip are very reproducible (3.4 mm x 1.6 mm  x 0.3 mm)
• etched and lowered corners of the support chip avoid contact between the  support chip and the sample
 
AFM Tip

• nanotools® High Density Carbon / Diamond Like Carbon (HDC / DLC) AFM tip
• AFM tip height typically 2.5 μm and radius of curvature typically < 10 nm
• AFM tip aspect ratio typically 5:1 and tilt compensation of 8°

Gold Reflex Coating

• 30/70 nm thick gold reflex coating on the detector side of the AFM cantilever
• enhances reflectance of the laser beam

Different types of Ultra-Short Silicon Nitride Cantilevers have been fabricated:

Type	SD-USC-SiN-6MHz	SD-USC-SiN-3MHz	SD-USC-SiN-1.2MHz
Resonance Frequency	6.0 MHz	3.0 MHz	1.2 MHz
Force Constant	45 N/m	0.9 N/m	0.4 N/m
Cantilever length	9.5 µm	4.2 µm	6.8 µm
Cantilever width	4.5 µm	2.3 µm	4.5 µm
Cantilever thickness	0.50 µm	0.06 µm	0.06 µm

NANOSENSORS™ is a trademark of NanoWorld AG.