Polymer micro cantilevers for force controlled atomic force microscopy 2

—Fabrication of cantilevers—

Abstract

The micro cantilever made of entirely plastic material has been developed. The probing tip, cantilever and base are made of same photo plastic. By arranging the geometry of the cantilever, its spring constant and resonant frequency is controlled. The low Q of the polyimide improves the stability of the force controlled atomic force microscope. The fabrication error in cantilever geometry was 1.5%. The estimated resonant frequency has a good agreement with the designed value.