PointProbe Silicon AFM Probes

POINTPROBE®
SILICON AFM PROBES

Most widely used and best-known high quality
SPM and AFM probe world-wide

Pointprobe Tip

Pointprobe Side View

Pointprobe 3D View

Pointprobe® Tip (Standard)

The standard Pointprobe® tip is shaped like a polygon based pyramid.
Its macroscopic halfcone angle is 20° to 25° viewed along the cantilever axis,
25° to 30° when looking from the side and virtually zero at the very tip end.
The Pointprobe® tip is 10–15 µm high and shows a tip radius of typically
smaller than 8 nm (smaller than 12 nm guaranteed).

General

  • SPM and AFM probes for very high resolution imaging
  • fits to all well-known commercial SPMs and AFMs
  • monolithic design of single crystal silicon support chip, cantilever and tip

Material Features

  • highly doped, single crystal silicon (resistivity 0.01–0.025 Ωcm)
  • no intrinsic stress and absolutely straight cantilevers
  • chemically inert silicon for application in fluids or electrochemical cells

Cantilever

  • rectangular cantilever with trapezoidal cross section
  • wide detector side for easy laser beam adjustment
  • small width at the tip side reduces damping

Support Chip

  • dimensions of the support chip are very reproducible (1.6 mm x 3.4 mm x 0.3 mm)
  • alignment grooves on backside of the support chip in conjunction with
    alignment chip ensure replacement of probes without major readjustment
    of the laser beam

Package Sizes

  • packages of 10, 20 or 50 scanning probes
  • full wafer of 380 up to 388 scanning probes, depending on the product

AVAILABLE COATINGS

Reflex Coating

  • 30 nm thick aluminum coating
    on the backside of the cantilever
  • enhances reflectance of the laser beam by a factor of 2.5
  • prevents light from interfering with the cantilever

Hard Magnetic + Soft Magnetic Coating

  • hard magnetic coating: cobalt alloy coating on the tip side for a permanent magnetization of the tip
  • soft magnetic coating: soft magnetic coating on tip side (coercivity of app. 0.75 Oe, remanence magnetization of app. 225 emu/cm3)

Other coatings for standard SPM and AFM probes available on request

SuperSharpSilicon™ Tip (SSS)

High Aspect Ratio Tip (AR5)

Tilt compensated AR5T

Diamond Coated Tip
(DT, CDT)

SuperSharpSilicon™ Tip (SSS)

or enhanced resolution of microroughness and nanostructures we have developed an advanced tip manufacturing process leading to a further improvement of the tip sharpness with tip radii as small as 2 nm. With these AFM tips we have pushed back the frontiers of technology.

Tip Features

The tip height is 10–15 μm and the typical radius of a SuperSharpSilicon™ tip is about 2 nm. We guarantee a tip radius of smaller than 5 nm (guaranteed yield: 80%).
The half cone angle is smaller than 10° at the last 200 nm of the tip.

High Aspect Ratio Tip (AR5/AR5T)

For measurements on samples with sidewall angles approaching 90°, e.g. deep trench measurements or other semiconductor applications, we offer two different types of High Aspect Ratio Tips showing near vertical sidewalls. These tips have an overall height of 10 - 15 µm which allows measurements on highly corrugated samples. At the last few micrometers the tips show a high aspect ratio portion that is symmetric when viewed from the side as well as along the cantilever axis. The tip radius is typically 10 nm (smaller than 15 nm guaranteed).

Tip Features

The high aspect ratio portion of the AR5/AR5T tip is larger than 2 μm and shows an aspect ratio of typically 7:1 (a minimum aspect ratio of 5:1 guaranteed). Consequently the half cone angle of the high aspect ratio portion is typically smaller than 5°. Moreover the high aspect ratio portion of the AR5T is tilted 13° with respect to the center axis of the tip allowing absolutely symmetrical imaging.

Diamond Coated Tip (DT), Conductive Diamond Coated Tip (CDT)

For SPM and AFM applications that require hard contact between probe and sample we recommend our Diamond Coated Tip (DT). Some typical applications are friction force measurements, measurement of the elastic properties of samples, as well as wear measurements or nanostructuring. The Conductive Diamond Coated Tip (CDT) additionally offers a conductive, non-passivating coating (Electrical resistance between CDT-tip and conductive sample: <10 kΩ).

Tip and Coating Features

True polycrystalline diamond coating on the tip side of the cantilever with the
unsurpassed hardness of diamond.
The tip height is 10–15 μm and the thickness of the diamond layer is approximately 100 nm. The macroscopic tip radius is in the range of 100–200 nm, but the tip often exhibits a nanoroughness in the 10 nm regime.
The specific resistivity of the CDT is in the range of 0.003–0.005 Ωcm.

 

Diamond Coating

  • 100 nm thick coating of
    polycrystalline diamond on
    the tip side
  • unsurpassed hardness of the tip
  • conductive diamond coating also available

PtIr5 Coating

  • 25 nm layer of chromium/platinum iridium5 on both sides of the scanning probe
  • stress-compensated and wear resistant
  • enhances reflectance of the laser beam by a factor of 2
  • allows electrical measurements

Gold Coating (on request)

  • 70 nm thick chromium/gold coating on the backside of the cantilever
  • 70 nm thick chromium/gold coating on both sides of the probe