Single-Crystal Diamond Nanowire Tips for Ultrasensitive Force Microscopy

We report the fabrication, integration, and assessment of sharp diamond tips for ultrasensitive force microscopy experiments. Two types of tips, corresponding to the upper and lower halves of a diamond nanowire, were fabricated by top-down plasma etching from a single-crystalline substrate. The lower, surface-attached halves can be directly integrated into lithographically defined nanostructures, like cantilevers. The upper, detachable halves result in diamond nanowires with a tunable diameter (50-500 nm) and lengths of a few microns. Tip radii were around 10 nm and tip apex angles around 15°. We demonstrate the integration of diamond nanowires for use as scanning tips onto ultrasensitive pendulum-style silicon cantilevers. We find the noncontact friction and frequency jitter to be exceptionally low, with no degradation in the intrinsic mechanical quality factor (Q ≈ 130,000) down to tip-to-surface distances of about 10 nm. Our results are an encouraging step toward further improvement of the sensitivity and resolution of force-detected magnetic resonance imaging.