Fabrication of Micromechanical Tunneling Probes and Actuators on a Silicon Chip

概要

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Simultaneous visual control of tip position is indispensable forin-situ observation of nanoscopic phenomena at the tunneling gap. In this paper we propose a one-chip tunneling control device, which issmall enough to load on a standard sample holder of the transmissionelectron microscope (TEM). Tunneling probes and micro actuators have beensuccessfully integrated on a 2.4×2.4-mm2-chip by siliconmicromachining technique. A pair of sharp silicon tips is obtained by thecombination of stress-induced oxidation and selective etching of siliconoxide. Typical dimensions of the tips are 10 nm in radius and 1 µmin length with a 200-nm-initial gap. An electrostatically operatedcomb-drive actuator is used to close the gap with a voltage around 100 V. The tunneling tips are suspended over a through hole in the basesubstrate, and the tunneling gap can be observed by TEM. We found thatclear images could be obtained without distortion or shift due to thedriving voltage applied to the integrated actuator.
INSTITUTE OF PURE AND APPLIED PHYSICSの論文
1999-12-30