Diamond
Tips on
Silicon
Cantilevers

The single crystal diamond SCD probes are diamond tips specially grown by CVD and attached to silicon cantilevers.

The typical radius of SCD probe is the same as that of silicon AFM tip. An advantage of SCD is that the tip is very durable in any scanning mode and resistant to contamination because of the low surfce energy of diamond. As a result, SCD tip can be used to make many scans, which is especially advantageous when tip relpacement is hard, time-taking, or not compatible with the experiment.

SCD tip is hard enough to induce plastic deformation on almost any surface, e.g. polymers, metals, silicon and glass, making force lithography and scratching experiments accessible and easy on your SPM.

Because of the high hardness, SCD tip is also useful for material contrast AFM, nanoindentation, and mapping mechanical properties of hard materials with high resolution.

You can also benefit from the high aspect ratio of the diamond tip to study corrugated samples or reach to the bottom of pores. The full cone angle of SCD tip ranges from 5° to 10° on at least 1 micron from the end.