Development of a reliable and reproducible fabrication process for AFM probes for tip-enhanced spectroscopy applications

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This project aims at solving fundamental issues involved during the fabrication of atomic-force microscope tips**coated with a metallic thin film. Nanodevice Solutions Inc. (NDS), a company specialized in the conception**and fabrication of specialty AFM probes has started investigating the production of metallized tips used for**specialized high spatial resolution applications in a new scientific instrumentation segment. These probes that**are used in nanoscale spectroscopy methods and are generally coated with a noble metal like silver or gold**benefitting from a local electromagnetic enhancement through a plasmonic effect. Nevertheless, in the case of**silver, an additional protection must be deposited to prevent the silver from oxidation and mechanical**degradation. NDS has proposed such a method based on atomic layer deposition (ALD) but first results shows**that the protection layer deposited by ALD undergoes rapid degradation. This proposal aims at investigating**such problem using the nanophotonic facility of F. Lagugné-Labarthet and the Western nanofabrication facility**for scanning electron microscopy analysis. The tips will be tested with the unique suite of setups developed in**Lagugné's group and will be used as feedback to improve the quality of the produced tips. Such measurements**will be conducted over time on a series of reference samples in order to evaluate the improvement in the**coating methodologies and the resulting mechanical and chemical stability over time.