Near-field microscopy: Is there an alternative to micro and nano resonating cantilevers?

Abstract

Most of commercial Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) oscillating probes use micrometric cantilevers that can make measurement with piconewton force resolution under vacuum. However, the flexure vibration cantilevers suffer from a degradation of both resonance frequency and quality factor when operating in liquids. Moreover, the additional laser set-up for amplitude detection also limits the integration and miniaturization of the resonator structure. In order to overcome these difficulties, we propose to replace cantilevers by bulk mode, in-plane vibrating MEMS resonators with integrated transduction methods.