High-speed force sensor for force microscopy and profilometry utilizing a quartz

tuning fork
Franz J. Giessibl

Citation: Applied Physics Letters 73, 3956 (1998); doi: 10.1063/1.122948

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Erratum: “High-speed force sensor for force microscopy and profilometry utilizing a quartz tuning fork” [Appl.
Phys. Lett. 73, 3956 (1998)]
Appl. Phys. Lett. 74, 4070 (1999); 10.1063/1.123265

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2016 13:45:47
 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS VOLUME 73, NUMBER 26 28 DECEMBER 1998

High-speed force sensor for force microscopy and profilometry utilizing

a quartz tuning fork
Franz J. Giessibla)
Universität Augsburg, Institute of Physics, and EKM, Experimentalphysik VI, 86135 Augsburg, Germany
~Received 31 August 1998; accepted for publication 21 October 1998!
Force sensors are key elements of atomic force microscopes and surface profilometers. Sensors with
an integrated deflection meter are particularly desirable. Here, quartz tuning forks as used in watches
are utilized as force sensors. A novel technique is employed which simplifies the interpretation of
the data and increases the imaging speed by at least one order of magnitude compared to previous
implementations. The variation of the imaging signal with distance fits well to a Hertzian contact
model. Images of compact discs and calibration gratings, which have been obtained with scanning
speeds up to 230 mm/s, are presented. © 1998 American Institute of Physics.
@S0003-6951~98!00152-1#

The heart of both atomic force microscopes1 ~AFM! and pressure can be achieved—about ten times higher than the Q
surface profilometers2 is the force sensor with tip which of conventional CLs. The tuning forks used here have f bare 0
maps the surface. The forces acting on the tip are usually 532 768 Hz (52 15 Hz), the length of one prong is L
sensed by mounting the tip on a cantilever beam ~CL! and 53.0 mm, thickness t5330 m m and width w5120 m m.
measuring its deflection. Optical detection is the most com- With the Youngs modulus of quartz E57.87•1011 N/m2 and
mon method to detect the deflection of the CL,3 but also mass density11 r 52650 kg/m3 the theoretical spring constant
integrated deflection sensors based on the piezoresistive4 or is k50.25Ew(t/L) 3 53143 N/m and the theoretical
equals12 0 51.015AE/ r w/(2 p L )
f bare 2
piezoelectric5 effect are available. Here, it is demonstrated eigenfrequency
that quartz tuning forks6 which are produced by the millions 532 280 Hz—in good agreement with the nominal eigenfre-
annually mainly for frequency normals in the watch industry quency. When the prongs are deflected by q 8 , the piezoelec-
can be used as force sensors for AFMs or profilometers. tric effect causes a voltage V across the electrodes. The sen-
Güethner et al.7 have used tuning forks as a force sensor in sitivity S of the forks of the type listed above was
acoustic near field microscopy and Karrai et al.8 have used a experimentally determined to S5V/q 8 56.6 m V/nm.
tuning fork to control the distance between the optical fiber The tip attached to the free prong is etched out of tung-
and the surface in a scanning near-field-optical microscope. sten wire with an initial diameter of 0.25 mm by ac etching
Recently, Edwards et al.9 have demonstrated a faster mode in 1 m KOH. The final diameter is approximately 0.15 mm
using a phase-locked-loop detector. and the length 1 mm. The eigenfrequency with attached tips
In all the applications above, the fork is mounted in a drops to f 0 '12216 kHz. The apex of the tips as determined
similar manner as in a watch: the base part is fixed and both by scanning electron microscopy is approximately spherical
with a radius of R tip'150 nm.
prongs are oscillating opposed to each other. The dynamical
The QPS is operated in the frequency modulation mode
forces of the two prongs are then compensated in the base
as introduced by Albrecht et al.13 Figure 2 is a schematic of
part. Since the base part and prongs are made out of a single
the detection electronics. The QPS is placed on an actuator,
quartz crystal, internal dissipation is low in this oscillation
the deflection signal is routed through a preamplifier, a phase
mode and the Q value is extremely high ~up to 100 000 in
vacuum and 10 000 in air!. However, the symmetry of the
prongs is broken when one of them is subject to a tip sample
interaction. Even conservative tip sample forces cause damp-
ing in this mode, only slow scanning speeds are possible and
the imaging signal is very difficult to interpret. Fixing one of
the prongs firmly to a supporting structure overcomes this
problem ~‘‘qPlus-sensor’’ 10! and allows using tuning forks
in a similar manner as conventional CLs in AFM.
Figure 1 is a scanning electron microscope ~SEM! image
of a qPlus-sensor ~QPS!: one prong of a tuning fork is
bonded to a mount, the other prong has a tip attached to it.
The quality of the bond between the mount and the fixed
prong is crucial for obtaining a high Q value. Using epoxy
resins with fillers, Q values up to a few thousand in ambient

a!
Electronic mail: franz@[email protected] FIG. 1. Scanning electron microscope image of the force sensor.

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0003-6951/98/73(26)/3956/3/$15.00 3956 © 1998 American Institute of Physics
2016 13:45:47
 Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 73, No. 26, 28 December 1998 Franz J. Giessibl 3957

FIG. 2. Schematic of an atomic force microscope based on frequency modu-

lation detection.

shifter and an automatic gain control circuit ~AGC! before it

is fed back to the actuator. The AGC adjusts for a constant FIG. 4. Image of the metal foil from a compact disk. Scanning speed 12
lines per second ~lps!, tungsten tip, k53300 N/m, A 0 5150 nm, D f
vibration amplitude A 0 . The deflection signal is also fed into 53 Hz, f 0 513535 Hz.
a phase-locked-loop circuit ~PLL! which converts the oscil-
lation frequency f to a dc signal which is proportional to the
difference between f and an adjustable setpoint. Forces F ts 4
F ts~ d ! 5 E * AR tip~ 2d ! 1.5 for d,0 ~2!
between the tungsten tip and a sample cause the frequency to 3
change from f 0 to f 5 f 0 1D f . The frequency shift can be
calculated with first order perturbation theory:14 and F ts50 for d.0 ~Hertzian contact!. E * is the effective
Youngs modulus given by12

D f ~ d ! 52
f 20
kA 0
E
0
1/f 0
F ts~ d1A 0 @ 11cos~ 2 p f 0 t !# ! 1
E*
5
12 m 2sample 12 m 2tip
E sample
1
E tip
. ~3!

3cos~ 2 p f 0 t ! dt. ~1! Evaluation of Eq. ~1! for this force yields ~for A 0 @2d):
In principle, F ts is attractive as long as d, the minimal dis- f 0 2&
D f ~ d !5 E * AR tipd 2 for d,0 ~4!
0 3p
tance between the front atom of the tip and the sample is kA 3/2
positive. In vacuum, it is even possible to obtain atomic reso-
lution by probing the attractive forces.15 However, attractive and D f 50 for d.0. For comparing the data with results
forces are not very well reproducible in ambient conditions, with other amplitudes and spring constants, a normalized fre-
it is much easier to work with the repulsive forces which quency shift14 is used:
arise upon contact. For a spherical tip and a flat sample, the
repulsive forces are given by12

FIG. 3. Experimental and theoretical normalized frequency shift g FIG. 5. Image of a test grating with 10 mm pitch and 100 nm height,
@ 5(D
Reuse of AIP f / f 0 )kA 3/2
Publishing # versus
0content is distance forthe
subject to an terms
aluminum sample and a spherical scanning speed 0.7 lps, sapphire
at: https://publishing.aip.org/authors/rights-and-permissions. tip, k53300
Download to IP: N/m, A 0 5250 nm,On:
132.199.101.133 D f Thu, 19 May
tungsten tip with a radius of 150 nm. 515 Hz, f 0 527 214 Hz.
2016 13:45:47
 3958 Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 73, No. 26, 28 December 1998 Franz J. Giessibl

mass of a tungsten tip, therefore the eigenfrequency of the

fork dropped much less. However, the ‘‘ghosts’’ in the de-
pressions of Fig. 5 indicate a double tip. Figure 6 is a 5
35 mm2 image of a processed silicon wafer. The white dots
in the image are approximately 8 nm high and 100 nm wide.
The vertical noise in the image is below 1 nm.
So far, this sensor has only been operated in ambient
conditions with strong repulsive forces. The lateral resolu-
tion which has been demonstrated is in the order of 100 nm.
Better resolution is expected when the sensor is operated in
vacuum. A recent analysis17 has shown that vertical resolu-
tion of a few pm should also be possible with rather stiff
cantilevers with k'1000 N/m. Also, atomic resolution on Si
(111)-(737) with an AFM with etched tungsten tips has
been demonstrated recently.18 Therefore, even atomic reso-
lution might be achievable with this new type of force sen-
sor. Compared to conventional CLs, the main advantages of
this new sensor is its self sensing capability, i.e., no optics is
FIG. 6. Image of a processed silicon wafer, scanning speed 1 lps, tungsten
required for sensing the deflection and its very low power
tip, k53300 N/m, A 0 5150 nm, D f 58 Hz, f 0 513 535 Hz. The height of dissipation in the order of nW, i.e., six orders of magnitude
the white dots is ;8 nm, their width '100 nm. lower than with piezoresistive or optical detection methods.

The author wishes to thank Jochen Mannhart for discus-

Df sions and Klaus Wiedenmann for taking the SEM image of
g5 kA 3/2
0 . ~5!
f0 the force sensor ~Fig. 1!. This work was partially supported
by BMBF Grant No. 13N6918/1.
Figure 3 shows experimental and theoretical data for the
normalized frequency shifts for a tungsten tip and aluminum 1
G. Binnig, C. F. Quate, and Ch. Gerber, Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 930 ~1986!.
surface. The parameters used were A 0 5450 nm, f 0 2
J. B. P. Williamson, Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. 182, 21 ~1967!.
516 083 Hz, k53300 N/m and R tip5150 nm. For tungsten 3
D. Sarid, Scanning Force Microscopy ~Oxford University Press, New
and aluminum, the effective Youngs modulus is E * 56.7 4
York, 1994!.
M. Tortonese, R. C. Barrett, and C. F. Quate, Appl. Phys. Lett. 62, 834
3109 N/m2. For indentations d&30 nm, the experimental ~1993!.
frequency shift reflects the quadratic behavior of Eq. ~4!. For 5
T. Itoh and T. Suga, Nanotechnology 4, 218 ~1993!.
6
larger indentations, the conditions for which the theoretical F. L. Walls, in Precision Frequency Control, edited by E. A. Gerber and
A. Ballato ~Academic, Orlando, 1985!, p. 276.
frequency shift was calculated ~constant amplitude! are no 7
P. Guethner, U. Fischer, and K. Dransfeld, Appl. Phys. B: Photophys.
longer fulfilled. Additional damping is noticeable for inden- Laser Chem. B48, 89 ~1989!; P. Guethner, Dissertation, University Kon-
tations d*30 nm—the amplitude drops and the experimental stanz, Germany, 1992.
frequency shift increases approximately linear with indenta-
8
K. Karrai and R. D. Grober, Appl. Phys. Lett. 66, 1842 ~1995!.
9
H. Edwards, L. Taylor, W. Duncan, and A. Melmed, J. Appl. Phys. 82,
tion. While this deviation is caused by strong interaction, the 980 ~1997!.
linear relationship between frequency shift and distance al- 10
F. J. Giessibl, ‘‘qPlus Sensor’’—Offenlegungsschrift DE196 33 546 A1,
lows very fast and reliable operation of the microscope. German Patent Office ~1998!.
Figure 4 shows an image of a metal foil which was 11
H. Kuchling, Taschenbuch der Physik ~Harri Deutsch, Thun and
Frankfurt/Main, 1982!.
peeled off a compact disk. The image was obtained for a 12
C. J. Chen, Introduction to Scanning Tunneling Microscopy ~Oxford Uni-
constant frequency shift D f 53 Hz with A 0 5150 nm. The versity Press, New York, 1993!.
normalized frequency shift is g 535.8pNAm—about 1000 13
T. R. Albrecht, P. Grütter, D. Horne, and D. Rugar, J. Appl. Phys. 69, 668
times larger in magnitude than the normalized frequency ~1991!.
14
F. J. Giessibl, Phys. Rev. B 56, 16010 ~1997!.
shift in noncontact AFM with true atomic resolution.16 The 15
F. J. Giessibl, Science 267, 68 ~1995!; S. Kitamura, M. Iwatsuki, Jpn. J.
acquisition speed was 12 lines per second ~lps! and the width Appl. Phys., Part 2 34, L145 ~1995!.
of the image is 9.6 mm, thus the scanning speed is 230 mm/ 16
When imaging with true atomic resolution, g '230fNAm is a typical
s—100 times faster than in previous implementations.9 Fig- 17
value, see Table 1 in Ref. 17.
F. J. Giessibl, H. Bielefeldt, S. Hembacher, and J. Mannhart, Appl. Surf.
ure 5 presents an image of a calibration grating. Here, the tip
Sci. ~to be published!.
of the QPS is a small crystal of sapphire ~approx. 0.3 mm 18
R. Erlandsson, L. Olsson, and P. Martensson, Phys. Rev. B 54, R8309
diameter!. The mass of this crystal is much less than the ~1996!.

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2016 13:45:47