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posted by janrinok on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the overcoming-tiny-problems dept.

EPFL researchers have printed nanometric-scale sensors capable of improving the performance of atomic force microscopes.

Tiny sensors made through nanoscale 3-D printing may be the basis for the next generation of atomic force microscopes. These nanosensors can enhance the microscopes' sensitivity and detection speed by miniaturizing their detection component up to 100 times. The sensors were used in a real-world application for the first time at EPFL, and the results are published in Nature Communications.

Atomic force microscopy is based on powerful technology that works a little like a miniature turntable. A tiny cantilever with a nanometric tip passes over a sample and traces its relief, atom by atom. The tip's infinitesimal up-and-down movements are picked up by a sensor so that the sample's topography can be determined.

One way to improve atomic force microscopes is to miniaturize the cantilever, as this will reduce inertia, increase sensitivity, and speed up detection. Researchers at EPFL's Laboratory for Bio- and Nano-Instrumentation achieved this by equipping the cantilever with a 5-nanometer thick sensor made with a nanoscale 3-D-printing technique. "Using our method, the cantilever can be 100 times smaller," says Georg Fantner, the lab's director.

[...] Together with Michael Huth's lab at Goethe Universität at Frankfurt am Main, they developed a sensor made up of highly conductive platinum nanoparticles surrounded by an insulating carbon matrix. Under normal conditions, the carbon isolates the electrons. But at the nano-scale, a quantum effect comes into play: some electrons jump through the insulating material and travel from one nanoparticle to the next. "It's sort of like if people walking on a path came up against a wall and only the courageous few managed to climb over it," said Fantner.

When the shape of the sensor changes, the nanoparticles move further away from each other and the electrons jump between them less frequently. Changes in the current thus reveal the deformation of the sensor and the composition of the sample.

Another related story.


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  • (Score: 2) by dak664 on Tuesday September 27 2016, @11:48PM

    by dak664 (2433) on Tuesday September 27 2016, @11:48PM (#407130)

    "a tiny cantilever with a nanometric tip passes over a sample and traces its relief, atom by atom."

    No.

    A cantilever with a buzzword tip passes over a sample and traces the attractive force as a function of position.
    As in all microscopies, this is a convolution of the interaction between probe and sample. Signal to noise can become very large when both are crystals with similar spacing, but atomic resolution is lost.

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