Platinum silicide probes: A novel approach to manufacture highly conductive AFM probes with small radii and high wear resistance

Abstract

Conventionally, conductive Atomic Force Microscopy (c-AFM) probes are either made by depositing a conducting material such as a metal, an alloy or a doped diamond layer onto a ready-made AFM probe or, by depositing one of those materials into an inverted pyramid anisotropically etched into silicon followed by a subsequent tip and cantilever release process. However, none of those technologies allow fabricating probes featuring low wear rate and reliable conduction together with the requirement of small tip radii. In this work, c-AFM results using a newly developed cantilever with platinum silicide (PtSi) tip are presented. Those tips have small radii, conductivity close to commercial PtIr coated probes but have an outstanding mechanical wear-out behaviour and sustained electrical contact quality.