Fabrication and analysis of cylindrical resin AFM microcantilevers

Abstract

a b s t r a c tIn this paper a new method of fabricating cylindrical resin microcantilevers using the Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM) technique of Micro-stereolithography (MSL) is described. The method is rapid and commercially viable, allowing the fabrication of atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilevers which exhibit much larger spring constants than those currently commercial available. This allows for experimentation in a force regime orders of magnitude higher than currently possible using the AFM. This makes these cantilevers ideally suited for AFM-based depth sensing indentation. Due to their geometry, the assumptions used in the standard Euler-Bernoulli beam theory usually used to analyse AFM cantilevers may no longer be valid. Therefore approximate analytical solutions based on Timoshenko beam theory have been derived for the stiffness and resonant frequency of these cantilevers. Prototypes of the cantilevers have been fabricated and tested. Results show good agreement between experiment and theory.

Application of Colloid Probe Atomic Force Microscopy to the Adhesion of Thin Films of Viscous and Viscoelastic Silicone Fluids

“…For example, rigid-framed systems such as mechanical testers employ load cells that will have spring constants on the order 10 5 N/m and greater. Additionally, AFM cantilevers made from photocurable resin have been manufactured using Direct Digital Manufacturing, 75 exhibiting spring constants of the order 100À 1000 N/m, which allows beams in the μN to mN force regimes to be used in AFM. Hence, F peak * was calculated as a function of Ca for different values of k using both the capillary-viscous and capillary-nonlinear viscoelastic models.…”