Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication Principles: Accurate New Methodology in Scanning Thermal Microscopy

Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication Principles

"Accurate New Methodology in Scanning Thermal Microscopy"
by Abdelhak Saci, Jean-Luc Battaglia, and Indryaush De
in the IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, vol. 14, no. 6, November 2015, pp. 1035-1039

After careful and considered review of the content and authorship of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE’s Publication Principles.

The probe presented in this paper was developed and produced by The University of Glasgow and Kelvin Nanotechnology, see: 'New Methods for Calibrated Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM)': IEEE Sensors 2007, p708. The Scanning Electron Microscope image in Figure 1 was taken directly from the 2007 paper without the original authors knowledge. In addition, the micrograph shows incorrect microscope settings and scale bar. The original image was taken on a Hitachi S4700, at 30 kV, 25.7 mm working distance and secondary electron detection. The scale bar on the copied image should be 77 μm, rather than the 20 μm indicated. The probe fabrication procedure is also incorrect and a correct version can be found in the original 2007 conference paper.


In this study, we present a scanning thermal microscopy experiment with the probe working under vacuum allowing a spatial resolution of 25 nm. These measurements are made with a new four-contacts resistive probe, well suited for the 3ω measurement technique. A system identification approach in the out-of-contact mode provides the thermal model of the probe. This approach does not require knowledge of the geometrical and thermal properties of the probe. This sensor model is integrated into a comprehensive global model taking into account the heat transfer within the investigated surface. We show that the contact resistance and the radius of the contact area at the probe-material interface can be identified and are independent of the nature of the probed material when thermal conductivity ranges from 0.2 to 41 W · m^-1 · K^-1.