Demonstration of an electrostatic-shielded cantilever

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel electrostatic-shielded cantilever design with reduced parasitic capacitance, fabricated using focused ion beam techniques, enhancing performance in electrostatic force microscopy and related applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new cantilever modification with metallic electrodes for improved electrostatic shielding, demonstrating fabrication and performance improvements.

Findings

Reduced parasitic capacitance achieved

Enhanced sensitivity in electrostatic measurements

Versatile application in microscopy techniques

Abstract

The fabrication and performances of cantilevered probes with reduced parasitic capacitance starting from a commercial Si3N4 cantilever chip is presented. Nanomachining and metal deposition induced by focused ion beam techniques were employed in order to modify the original insulating pyramidal tip and insert a conducting metallic tip. Two parallel metallic electrodes deposited on the original cantilever arms are employed for tip biasing and as ground plane in order to minimize the electrostatic force due to the capacitive interaction between cantilever and sample surface. Excitation spectra and force-to-distance characterization are shown with different electrode configurations. Applications of this scheme in electrostatic force microscopy, Kelvin probe microscopy and local anodic oxidation is discussed.