title: Fabrication of high-quality SNOM probes by pre-treating the fibres before chemical etching.
abstract: A new method to fabricate high-quality fibre probes for scanning near-field optical microscopes by pre-treating the fibre before chemical etching was proposed and implemented. In the pre-treating process, the diameter of the fibre is reduced to a range of 7 -20 mum by etching one end of the fibre in the HF solution and a taper angle is formed simultaneously. Then the tapered part of the fibre is coated with a thick layer of plastic film and etched in the HF solution again. High-quality probes are obtained with an apex diameter as low as approximately 20 nm and a large cone angle.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Jiasen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Zhi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Qihuang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gong