Micromachined Si cantilever arrays for parallel AFM operation

Ahn, Yonghan; Ono, Takahito; Esashi, Masayoshi

doi:10.1007/s12206-007-1029-2

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…One is to change the AFM measurement procedure from serial to parallel type [6]. This idea is usually realised by applying cantilever arrays, which are usually fabricated with integrated sensors and/or actuators using MEMS technology [7][8]. The shortcoming of this approach lies in the complicated fabrication of the sensors and the difficulties in its operation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast and accurate: high-speed metrological large-range AFM for surface and nanometrology

Dai

Koenders

Fluegge

et al. 2018

Meas. Sci. Technol.

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Low measurement speed remains as a major shortcoming of the scanning probe microscopic techniques. It leads not only to a low measurement throughput, but also to a significant measurement drift over the long measurement time needed (up to hours or even days). In this paper, development of a high speed metrological large range atomic force microscope (HS Met. LR-AFM) with a capable measurement speed up to 1 mm/s is presented. In its design, a high accurate nanopositioning and nanomeasuring machine (NMM) is combined with a high dynamic flexure hinge piezo stage to move sample. The AFM output signal is combined with the position readouts of the piezo stage and the NMM to derive the surface topography. This design has a remarkable advantage that it well combines different bandwidth and amplitude of different stages/sensors, which is required for high speed measurements. While the HS Met. LR-AFM significantly reduces the measurement time while maintains (or even improves) the metrological performance than the previous Met. LR-AFM, its application capabilities are extended significantly. Two application examples, the realisation of reference areal surface metrology and the calibration of a kind 3D nano standards, have been demonstrated in the paper in detail.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast and accurate: high-speed metrological large-range AFM for surface and nanometrology

Dai

Koenders

Fluegge

et al. 2018

Meas. Sci. Technol.

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show abstract

“…Several research groups have recently been enhancing the speed of AFM for the imaging of dynamic processes, mostly in the field of biophysics, with impressive results. [13][14][15][16] In these cases, the sample size is usually very small, e.g., a few mm, and the sample has small height corrugations. This makes "sample scanning" design a suitable architecture, in which the AFM cantilever is kept stationary and the sample is scanned along three axes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several research groups have suggested parallelization of AFM as a direct approach to increasing AFM throughput in direct proportion to the number of AFM tips in an array. 12,[14][15][16][17][18] Following this path, efforts to increase the throughput of AFM using arrays of cantilevers have been made, instead of a single cantilever, motivated by advances in microsystems fabrication 3 technologies and CMOS processes. Examples include data storage, 18 parallel imaging and force spectroscopy 12 and parallel AFM nanolithography.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-throughput atomic force microscopes operating in parallel

Sadeghian

Herfst

Dekker

et al. 2017

Review of Scientific Instruments

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Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is an essential nanoinstrument technique for several applications such as cell biology and nanoelectronics metrology and inspection. The need for statistically significant sample sizes means that data collection can be an extremely lengthy process in AFM. The use of a single AFM instrument is known for its very low speed and not being suitable for scanning large areas, resulting in a very-low-throughput measurement. We address this challenge by parallelizing AFM instruments. The parallelization is achieved by miniaturizing the AFM instrument and operating many of them simultaneously. This instrument has the advantages that each miniaturized AFM can be operated independently and that the advances in the field of AFM, both in terms of speed and imaging modalities, can be implemented more easily. Moreover, a parallel AFM instrument also allows one to measure several physical parameters simultaneously; while one instrument measures nano-scale topography, another instrument can measure mechanical, electrical, or thermal properties, making it a lab-on-an-instrument. In this paper, a proof of principle of such a parallel AFM instrument has been demonstrated by analyzing the topography of large samples such as semiconductor wafers. This nanoinstrument provides new research opportunities in the nanometrology of wafers and nanolithography masks by enabling real die-to-die and wafer-level measurements and in cell biology by measuring the nano-scale properties of a large number of cells.

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“…Tip arrays have been pursued to increase the SPM throughput [3,4], but laborious engineering and control of individual tips are required to maintain the nanometer distance between each tip and surface. Also, precise shaping of the tip geometry by etching [5,6] or functionalization with carbon nanotubes [7] enables SPM to image nanostructures with a higher aspect ratio, but the technique still cannot image 3D overhanging structures and cavities, as well as soft samples like biological materials. This limited imaging capability was well addressed by photonic force microscopy (PFM) [8,9] that replaces the conventional stiff probe with an optically trapped, sub-micron-sized particle as a soft probe.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three-dimensional nanoscale imaging by plasmonic Brownian microscopy

et al. 2017

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Three-dimensional (3D) imaging at the nanoscale is a key to understanding of nanomaterials and complex systems. While scanning probe microscopy (SPM) has been the workhorse of nanoscale metrology, its slow scanning speed by a single probe tip can limit the application of SPM to wide-field imaging of 3D complex nanostructures. Both electron microscopy and optical tomography allow 3D imaging, but are limited to the use in vacuum environment due to electron scattering and to optical resolution in micron scales, respectively. Here we demonstrate plasmonic Brownian microscopy (PBM) as a way to improve the imaging speed of SPM. Unlike photonic force microscopy where a single trapped particle is used for a serial scanning, PBM utilizes a massive number of plasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) under Brownian diffusion in solution to scan in parallel around the unlabeled sample object. The motion of NPs under an evanescent field is three-dimensionally localized to reconstruct the superresolution topology of 3D dielectric objects. Our method allows high throughput imaging of complex 3D structures over a large field of view, even with internal structures such as cavities that cannot be accessed by conventional mechanical tips in SPM.

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Micromachined Si cantilever arrays for parallel AFM operation

Cited by 9 publications

References 10 publications

Fast and accurate: high-speed metrological large-range AFM for surface and nanometrology

Fast and accurate: high-speed metrological large-range AFM for surface and nanometrology

High-throughput atomic force microscopes operating in parallel

Three-dimensional nanoscale imaging by plasmonic Brownian microscopy

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