title: The influence of a Si cantilever tip with/without tungsten coating on noncontact atomic force microscopy imaging of a Ge(001) surface.
abstract: A sharp probe tip with atomic scale stability is essential and desirable for noncontact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) studies at the atomic scale. We observed a Ge(001) surface using both a Si cantilever and a tungsten coated Si cantilever at room temperature in order to investigate the influence of the tip apex structure on the NC-AFM images. By using the Si cantilever, we first obtained four types of image at the atomic scale which can be explained assuming a dimer structure on the tip apex. On the other hand, the home-made tungsten coated tip, which has atomic scale stability and high electric conductivity, imaged the so-called ordered c(4 x 2) structure without any artifacts. The tungsten coated cantilever was found to have significantly higher performance for NC-AFM studies at the atomic scale than the Si cantilever.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Yamada-oka 2-1, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan. naitoh@ap.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Yoshitaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Naitoh
authors.forename: Yukinori
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kinoshita
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jun Li
authors.forename: Masami
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kageshima
authors.forename: Yasuhiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sugawara