Fabrication and characterization of advanced probes for magnetic force microscopy

Improving the lateral resolution of the MFM technique to the range

“…In order to improve the spatial resolution of the MFM technique, a further development of the magnetic probes is required. To achieve this goal, several approaches are described in literature [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. For the imaging of soft magnetic samples, it is very important that the sample-tip interaction does not lead to a modification or even destruction of the magnetic structures.…”

Imaging and Characterization of Magnetic Micro- and Nanostructures Using Force Microscopy

“…They range from etching/milling techniques to sharpen the magnetization volume [106,107,110], mounting of ferromagnetically filled carbon nanotubes onto cantilevers [108,[111][112][113], to attaching ferromagnetic nanospheres onto the cantilever [109]. These examples show impressively that a spatial confinement of the magnetic probe's volume may drastically increase the lateral resolution of MFM measurements [86].…”

Double Exchange Biased Magnetic Force Microscopy Tip and Comparison of Its Imaging Performance with Commercial Tips

“…[1][2][3][4] As it is with the case of any type of scanning probe microscopy techniques, there is always a demand to improve the spatial resolution of MFM. So far, various approaches have been taken by different groups to improve the spatial resolution of MFM, such as trimming the tips using focused ion beam (FIB), [5][6][7][8] producing high aspect ratio MFM tips using electron beam deposition, [9][10][11][12][13] fabricating tips using electron beam deposition and ion beam etching, [14][15][16] attaching carbon nanotubes followed by coating it with magnetic layers, [17][18][19] growing sharp tips by self-field emission 20) and coating the tips with multilayers. [21][22][23] Commercially available MFM tips are generally coated with a single layer of hard magnet with a high coercivity and low moment.…”