Electro-thermal microcantilever with integrated solid- state heater, conductive tip, and Schottky diode

This paper reports a heated atomic force microscope cantilever having a Schottky diode fabricated near the cantilever free end and a highly conducting tip. The forward bias and reverse bias operation of this probe offer different current voltage characteristics, such that the cantilever heating and temperature sensing capabilities are different in forward bias versus reverse bias operation. The asymmetric characteristics are due to the diode junction at the metal-silicon interface, which grants an additional degree of electro-thermal control compared to other types of heated cantilevers. To our knowledge this is the first batch-fabricated heated microcantilever with a metal-silicon diode junction fabricated near a tip.