Probe Tips
Probe tips are normally made of platinum/iridium, silicon nitride or gold. There are two main methods for obtaining a sharp probe tip, acid etching and cutting. The first involves dipping a wire end first into an acid bath and waiting until it has etched through the wire and the lower part drops away. The remainder is then removed and the resulting tip is often one atom in diameter. An alternative and much quicker method is to take a thin wire and cut it with a pair of scissors or a scalpel. Testing the tip produced via this method on a sample with a known profile will indicate whether the tip is good or not and a single sharp point is achieved roughly 50% of the time. It is not uncommon for this method to result in a tip with more than one peak; one can easily discern this upon scan due to a high level of ghost images.
Read more about this topic: Scanning Probe Microscopy
Famous quotes containing the words probe and/or tips:
“The middle years are ones in which children increasingly face conflicts on their own,... One of the truths to be faced by parents during this period is that they cannot do the work of living and relating for their children. They can be sounding boards and they can probe with the children the consequences of alternative actions.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“A new idea is rarely born like Venus attended by graces
More commonly it’s modeled of baling wire and acne.
More commonly it wheezes and tips over.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)