SBIR Phase II: Encased Cantilevers for Ultra-Sensitive Force and Mass Sensing in Liquids

SBIR 第二阶段：用于液体中超灵敏力和质量传感的封装悬臂

• 批准号: 1556128
• 负责人: Dominik Ziegler
• 金额: $ 74.71万
• 依托单位: Scuba Probe Technologies
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-04-15 至 2019-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1556128&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Encased; Cantilevers

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will improve the performance of encased atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilevers, reduce their fabrication costs, and optimize their properties for next-generation scanned probe microscopy technologies. Atomic force microscopy is a workhorse technique for providing nanometer-scale information of materials, but its performance is compromised by viscous damping when operated in fluid. The encased cantilevers to be developed in this project significantly reduces damping, leading to high force sensitivity and performance which is identical to AFM imaging done in air. This aids quantitative interpretation of data and simplifies instrument operation. Encased cantilevers are a drop-in replacement, permitting the transformation of existing instruments into cutting-edge tools simply by exchanging the probe. The impacts of these products will be felt in fields from biology to clean energy to materials science.The first technical objective of this research is to create new cantilever geometries that push the performance of our devices to the theoretical limits. The Phase I research resulted in a novel low-cost technique to fabricate encased cantilevers, thanks to the development of specialized semi-automated processing and quality control tools. The next technical objective of Phase II research is to further reduce fabrication costs by improving yields, increasing batch size, and implementing more manufacturing automation. We expect to demonstrate low-cost processing methods in which many high quality probes are fabricated efficiently. The third technical objective is to optimize these devices for next-generation scanned probe technologies including quantitative nanomechanical mapping, high-speed imaging and promising novel techniques such as photo induced force microscopy. At the end of the project period we will have optimized products specifically targeting these high growth applications.

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目将提高封装式原子力显微镜（AFM）杠杆的性能，降低其制造成本，并为下一代扫描探针显微镜技术优化其性能。 原子力显微镜是一种提供材料纳米级信息的主力技术，但其性能在流体中操作时会受到粘性阻尼的影响。 在这个项目中开发的封闭式AFM显着降低了阻尼，导致高的力灵敏度和性能，这与在空气中完成的AFM成像相同。 这有助于数据的定量解释并简化仪器操作。封装的杠杆是一种插入式替代品，只需更换探头即可将现有仪器转换为尖端工具。 从生物学到清洁能源，再到材料科学，这些产品的影响都将被感受到。这项研究的第一个技术目标是创造新的悬臂梁几何形状，将我们设备的性能推向理论极限。第一阶段的研究导致了一种新的低成本技术，以制造封装的杠杆，这要归功于专门的半自动化处理和质量控制工具的开发。第二阶段研究的下一个技术目标是通过提高产量，增加批量大小和实施更多的制造自动化来进一步降低制造成本。我们希望展示低成本的加工方法，其中许多高品质的探针被有效地制造。第三个技术目标是优化这些设备的下一代扫描探针技术，包括定量纳米力学映射，高速成像和有前途的新技术，如光诱导力显微镜。 在项目结束时，我们将专门针对这些高增长应用优化产品。