The application of scanning microwave microscopy (SMM) to extract calibrated electrical properties of cells and bacteria in air is presented. From the S 11 images, after calibration, complex impedance and admittance images of Chinese hamster ovary cells and E. coli bacteria deposited on a silicon substrate have been obtained. The broadband capabilities of SMM have been used to characterize the bio-samples between 2 GHz and 20 GHz. The resulting calibrated cell and bacteria admittance at 19 GHz were Y cell = 185 μS + j285 μS and Y bacteria = 3 μS + j20 μS, respectively. A combined circuitry-3D finite element method EMPro model has been developed and used to investigate the frequency response of the complex impedance and admittance of the SMM setup. Based on a proposed parallel resistance-capacitance model, the equivalent conductance and parallel capacitance of the cells and bacteria were obtained from the SMM images. The influence of humidity and frequency on the cell conductance was experimentally studied. To compare the cell conductance with bulk water properties, we measured the imaginary part of the bulk water loss with a dielectric probe kit in the same frequency range resulting in a high level of agreement.

We present a new method to extract resistivity and doping concentration of semiconductor materials from Scanning Microwave Microscopy (SMM) S11 reflection measurements. Using a three error parameters de-embedding workflow, the S11 raw data are converted into calibrated capacitance and resistance images where no calibration sample is required. The SMM capacitance and resistance values were measured at 18 GHz and ranged from 0 to 100 aF and from 0 to 1 MΩ, respectively. A tip-sample analytical model that includes tip radius, microwave penetration skin depth, and semiconductor depletion layer width has been applied to extract resistivity and doping concentration from the calibrated SMM resistance. The method has been tested on two doped silicon samples and in both cases the resistivity and doping concentration are in quantitative agreement with the data-sheet values over a range of 10(-3)Ω cm to 10(1)Ω cm, and 10(14) atoms per cm(3) to 10(20) atoms per cm(3), respectively. The measured dopant density values, with related uncertainties, are [1.1 ± 0.6] × 10(18) atoms per cm(3), [2.2 ± 0.4] × 10(17) atoms per cm(3), [4.5 ± 0.2] × 10(16) atoms per cm(3), [4.5 ± 1.3] × 10(15) atoms per cm(3), [4.5 ± 1.7] × 10(14) atoms per cm(3). The method does not require sample treatment like cleavage and cross-sectioning, and high contact imaging forces are not necessary, thus it is easily applicable to various semiconductor and materials science investigations.

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We obtained maps of the electric permittivity at ~19 GHz frequencies on non-planar thin film heterogeneous samples by means of combined atomic force-scanning microwave microscopy (AFM-SMM). We show that the electric permittivity maps can be obtained directly from the capacitance images acquired in contact mode, after removing the topographic cross-talk effects. This result demonstrates the possibility to identify the electric permittivity of different materials in a thin film sample irrespectively of their thickness by just direct imaging and processing. We show, in addition, that quantitative maps of the electric permittivity can be obtained with no need of any theoretical calculation or complex quantification procedure when the electric permittivity of one of the materials is known. To achieve these results the use of contact mode imaging is a key factor. For non-contact imaging modes the effects of the local sample thickness and of the imaging distance makes the interpretation of the capacitance images in terms of the electric permittivity properties of the materials much more complex. Present results represent a substantial contribution to the field of nanoscale microwave dielectric characterization of thin film materials with important implications for the characterization of novel 3D electronic devices and 3D nanomaterials.