Fast nanotopography imaging using a high speed cantilever with integrated heater-thermometer

This paper presents a high speed tapping cantilever with an integrated heater-thermometer for fast nanotopography imaging. The cantilever is much smaller and faster than previous heated cantilevers, with a length of 35 μm and a resonant frequency of 1.4 MHz. The mechanical response time is characterized by scanning over a backward-facing step of height 20 nm. The mechanical response time is 77 μs in air and 448 μs in water, which compares favorably to the fastest commercial cantilevers that do not have integrated heaters. The doped silicon cantilever is designed with an integrated heater that can heat and cool in about 10 μs and can operate in both air and water. We demonstrate standard laser-based topography imaging along with thermal topography imaging, when the cantilever is actuated via the piezoelectric shaker in an atomic force microscope system and when it is actuated by Lorentz forces. The cantilever can perform thermal topography imaging in tapping mode with an imaging resolution of 7 nm at a scan speed of 1.46 mm s(-1).