Asymmetric Dielectric Trilayer Cantilever Probe for Calorimetric High-Frequency Field Imaging

Multimaterial, microelectromechanical systems-based cantilever probes were developed for high-frequency magnetic field imaging. The basic configuration of the probe consists of a cantilever beam fabricated using surface micromachining and bulk micromachining techniques with dielectric silicon nitride and silicon oxide materials on a silicon wafer. A gold patterned metallization at the tip of the cantilever provides a source of eddy current heating due to the perpendicular component of the high-frequency magnetic field. This thermally absorbed power is converted to mechanical deflection by a multimaterial trilayer cantilever system. The deflection is measured with a beam-bounce optical technique employed in atomic force microscopy systems. We discuss the modeling, design, fabrication, and characterization of these field imaging probes