Parallel nanoimaging using an array of 30 heated microcantilevers

Abstract

A key limitation of atomic force microscopy (AFM) is the size of the measurement area and the speed with which this area can be measured. Cantilever arrays have the potential to increase the measurement area and speed compared to single cantilevers, although the integration and use of cantilever arrays is still not widespread. We report integration of an array of 30 individually addressable cantilevers into a commercial AFM. Each cantilever has an integrated resistive heater-thermometer that can measure nanometer-scale topography by tracking the cantilever heat flow. Parallel imaging with this AFM array can acquire an image of size 0.510 mm × 0.425 mm, much larger than typical AFM images. We acquired a 9.05 million-pixel image in 256 seconds at a cantilever scan speed of 226 μm s⁻¹ with noise-limited vertical resolution of 1.21 nm and pixels of size 72.15 nm × 351.5 nm. This throughput is more than two orders of magnitude larger than conventional AFM measurements.