Nanotopographical imaging using a heated atomic force microscope cantilever probe

Abstract

This paper reports quantitative topographical measurements using a heated atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever probe. The study compares topographies measured by the cantilever thermal signal to topographies measured by the laser-deflection signal of an AFM system. The experiment used 20 and 100 nm tall Si gratings as topographical test samples. The cantilever heater temperature ranged from 130 to 640 degrees C, and the cantilever power ranged from 1.5 to 6.6 mW. The measured topography sensitivity, which is the fractional change of the heated cantilever resistance, has a vertical bar Delta R-cant vertical bar R-cant of 4.5 x 10(-5) to 1.1 x 10(-3) per vertical nanometer, which is 10-100 times greater than that of similarly sized piezoresistive cantilevers. In a proof of concept demonstration, the heated cantilever measures the topography of a microfabricated platinum line of thickness 100 nm on a silicon dioxide substrate. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.