Morphology control and integration of the carbon nanotube tip for AFM

We report the development of atomic force microscope (AFM) tip with a carbon nanotube (CNT). To assemble the CNT on the topof Si tip, we used dielectrophoresis (DEP) which is caused by the dierence of the polarizability of a CNT and a medium under a non-uniform electric eld. We investigated the eect of the assembling angle between the tip and the at electrode. As the result, it was foundfor highest success rate was 10. in tip’s angle and 20. in electrode’s angle. In addition, to make the CNT tip that slants vertically, wedeveloped the new technique by the focused-ion-beam (FIB). The directionality of the CNT was changed according to the beam directionof FIB. Moreover, the straightness of the CNT was greatly improved by the ion beam. From the AFM measurements of 15 nm goldparticles, we showed that the CNT tip assembled by DEP produces higher resolution images than those of a conventional silicon tip. KCI Citation Count: 2