Improved atomic force microscopy cantilever performance by partial reflective coating

• Zeno Schumacher,
• Yoichi Miyahara,
• Laure Aeschimann and
• Peter Grütter

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 1450–1456, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.150

• coated cantilevers compared to fully coated ones while maintaining the same reflectivity, therefore making it possible to combine the best of both worlds. Keywords: cantilever; force noise; partial coating; Q-factor; Introduction For cantilever based beam deflection atomic force microscope (AFM

• , where the focus is on the Q-factor, was used. Cantilever specifications are summarized in Table 1. The partial reflective coating was realized by a shadow masking technique with thermal evaporation. The length of the partial coating, as well as the length of the cantilevers were measured with a

• Sosale et al. [8], derived a quantitative theory of how the internal material friction of a partial coating effects the Q-factor of a microcantilever: with ξ the normalized length (l/L), (ξ) the natural mode shape of the cantilever, E the Young’s modulus and hf, hs being the coating film thickness and