Heated atomic force microscope cantilevers with wear-resistant ultrananocrystalline diamond tips

We report a wear-resistant ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) tip integrated onto a heated atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever. The batch-fabricated UNCD tips have tip radii of about 10 nm and heights up to 7 μm. The tips were wear-resistant throughout 1.2 m of scanning over a silicon grating at a force of 200 nN and a speed of 10 μm/s. Under the same conditions, a silicon tip was completely destroyed. When used for thermal imaging, the UNCD tip heated cantilever has a vertical imaging resolution of 1.9 nm. Finally, we demonstrate thermal nanolithography of hundreds of nano structures of polyethylene.