title: A novel dog-bone oscillating AFM probe with thermal actuation and piezoresistive detection.
abstract: In order to effectively increase the resonance frequency and the quality factor of atomic force microscope (AFM) probes, a novel oscillating probe based on a dog-bone shaped MEMS resonator was conceived, designed, fabricated and evaluated. The novel probe with 400 μm in length, 100 μm in width and 5 μm in thickness was enabled to feature MHz resonance frequencies with integrated thermal actuation and piezoresistive detection. Standard silicon micromachining was employed. Both electrical and optical measurements were carried out in air. The resonance frequency and the quality factor of the novel probe were measured to be 5.4 MHz and 4000 respectively, which are much higher than those (about several hundreds of kHz) of commonly used cantilever probes. The probe was mounted onto a commercial AFM set-up through a dedicated probe-holder and circuit board. Topographic images of patterned resist samples were obtained. It is expected that the resonance frequency and the measurement bandwidth of such probes will be further increased by a proper downscaling, thus leading to a significant increase in the scanning speed capability of AFM instruments.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Electronic Engineering, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang 621999, China. xiong.zhuang@caep.cn.
authors.forename: Zhuang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.affiliation: Institut d'Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie-IEMN CNRS UMR8520, NAM6 group, Villeneuve d'Ascq 59650, France. estelle.mairiaux@iemn.univ-lille1.fr.
authors.forename: Estelle
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mairiaux
authors.affiliation: Institut d'Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie-IEMN CNRS UMR8520, NAM6 group, Villeneuve d'Ascq 59650, France. benjamin.walter@isen.iemn.univ-lille1.fr.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Walter
authors.affiliation: Institut d'Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie-IEMN CNRS UMR8520, NAM6 group, Villeneuve d'Ascq 59650, France. marc.faucher@isen.iemn.univ-lille1.fr.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Faucher
authors.affiliation: Institut d'Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie-IEMN CNRS UMR8520, NAM6 group, Villeneuve d'Ascq 59650, France. lionel.buchaillot@iemn.univ-lille1.fr.
authors.forename: Lionel
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Buchaillot
authors.affiliation: Institut d'Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie-IEMN CNRS UMR8520, NAM6 group, Villeneuve d'Ascq 59650, France. bernard.legrand@isen.iemn.univ-lille1.fr.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Legrand