Fabrication of polymer cantilevers for force-controlled atomic force microscope

Nobuhiro Kato; Choong Sik Park; Toshiro Matsumoto; Hisao Kikuta; Koichi Iwata

doi:10.1117/12.505434

3 November 2003 Fabrication of polymer cantilevers for force-controlled atomic force microscope

Nobuhiro Kato, Choong Sik Park, Toshiro Matsumoto, Hisao Kikuta, Koichi Iwata

Proceedings Volume 5183, Lithographic and Micromachining Techniques for Optical Component Fabrication II; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.505434
Event: Optical Science and Technology, SPIE's 48th Annual Meeting, 2003, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

We developed the fabrication process of all-plastic cantilever for force controlled atomic force microscope. The force controlled atomic force microscope can prevent damage during the scanning of the soft sample. However it has a drawback in its stability. To stabilize the system the cantilever is required to have small Q factor. The negative photo resist for MEMS (SU-8) has ideal properties, micromachinability and small Q factor, for this purpose. Here we demonstrate the cantilever consists of tip, lever and base with same polyimide. The mold of the probing tip is the pyramidal pit pattern on silicon wafer formed by direct leaser writing and anisotropic etching of silicon. Other elements of the cantilever are formed by contact lithography. The photo mask is also fabricated by direct laser writing. By arranging the dimensions of the cantilever, we can control its spring constant and resonant frequency. For the spring constant of 0.1N/m and the first resonant frequency of 2kHz, the typical dimensions of the cantilever is 1030 x 300 x 7 μm³. The fabrication error in cantilever geometry was 1.5%. The estimated resonant frequency has a good agreement with the designed value.

Citation Download Citation

Nobuhiro Kato, Choong Sik Park, Toshiro Matsumoto, Hisao Kikuta, and Koichi Iwata "Fabrication of polymer cantilevers for force-controlled atomic force microscope", Proc. SPIE 5183, Lithographic and Micromachining Techniques for Optical Component Fabrication II, (3 November 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.505434

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