title: Ultrananocrystalline diamond tip integrated onto a heated atomic force microscope cantilever.
abstract: We report a wear-resistant ultrananocrystalline (UNCD) diamond tip integrated onto a heated atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever and UNCD tips integrated into arrays of heated AFM cantilevers. The UNCD tips are batch-fabricated and have apex radii of approximately 10 nm and heights up to 7 μm. The solid-state heater can reach temperatures above 600 °C and is also a resistive temperature sensor. The tips were shown to be wear resistant throughout 1.2 m of scanning on a single-crystal silicon grating at a force of 200 nN and a speed of 10 μm s(-1). Under the same conditions, a silicon tip was completely blunted. We demonstrate the use of these heated cantilevers for thermal imaging in both contact mode and intermittent contact mode, with a vertical imaging resolution of 1.9 nm. The potential application to nanolithography was also demonstrated, as the tip wrote hundreds of polyethylene nanostructures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Hoe Joon
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Nicolaie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Moldovan
authors.forename: Jonathan R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Felts
authors.forename: Suhas
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Somnath
authors.forename: Zhenting
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Dai
authors.forename: Tevis D B
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Jacobs
authors.forename: Robert W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Carpick
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Carlisle
authors.forename: William P
authors.initials: WP
authors.lastname: King
mesh_terms: D003460:Crystallization / Q000379:methods; D018130:Diamond / Q000737:chemistry*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006361:Heating / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008422:Materials Testing; D018625:Microscopy, Atomic Force / Q000295:instrumentation*; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D018511:Systems Integration; D014159:Transducers
chemical_list: D018130:Diamond