Design of cantilever accessory for atomic force microscope

We propose a new accessory for a cantilever of atomic force microscope (AFM) to improve a performance of optical lever method. As is well known, a small deflection of a cantilever in scanning of sample surface is optically amplified by optical lever method in which an incidence angle of laser beam on the back surface of a cantilever ideally doubles in reflecting angle. Our idea is based on a realization of a sequential optical lever in twice, leading to ideally four times an incidence angle. The merit is to scan sample surface with a half contact force between a sample and a cantilever, which is quite beneficial for a measurement of a soft biological sample. To this end, a microfabrication with MEMS is addressed, and a prototype to confirm the feasibility of microfabrication of the target structure is reasonably constructed.