Improved Sensitivity of Dual-Axis Micro-Mechanical Probe for Friction Force Microscope

Improved Sensitivity of Dual-Axis Micro-Mechanical Probe for Friction Force Microscope

Blog Article

Improvement of the sensitivity of a dual-axis probe for friction force microscopy is presented.The dual-axis micro-mechanical probe combines a double cantilever and torsion beams.This probe could reduce the mechanical cross-talk between the lateral and vertical force detections.

In addition, dual-axis forces can be detected by measuring the Gifts dual-axis displacement of the probe end using the optical lever-based method.A low reflection region is formed at the probe end.The region is irradiated with an optical lever laser light and the reflected light is focused onto a four-segmented photo diode (PD).

The lateral force can be detected by measuring the displacement of the probe end using the dark region displacement on PD.A shallow step structure was used as a low reflection region in our previous study.However, its darkness was not enough and the improvement of the sensitivity was difficult.

In this paper, a new type of low reflection region is presented.The low reflection region using a slope-structure could improve the lateral deflection sensitivity by a factor of 1.4 as compared with conventional one.

And HR Grip Kit the minimum detection limits of the lateral deflection and force were of the order of 1 nm and 1 nN, respectively.This leads to accurate investigation of nanotribological phenomena.