Improvement of the Carbon Nanotube Tip by Focused Ion Beam and its Performance Evaluation

This paper presents development of carbon nanotube (CNT) tip modified by focused ion beam (FIB) and experimental results in non-contact mode of atomic force microscopy (AFM) using fabricated tip. We used an electric field which causes dielectrophoresis, to align and deposit CNTs on a conventional silicon tip. The morphology of the fabricated CNT tip was then modified into a desired shape using focused ion beam. We measured anodic aluminum oxide sample and trench structure to estimate the performance of FIB-modified tip and compared with those of conventional Si tip. We demonstrate that FIB modified tip in non contact mode had superior characteristics than conventional tip in the respects of wear, image resolution and sidewall measurement.