Design, Fabrication and Characterization of Active Atomic Force Microscope Cantilever Arrays

In this paper, we demonstrate an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) cantilever array featuring three active microcantilevers for parallel imaging in tapping mode (TM). The cantilevers are equipped with on-chip piezoelectric actuation/sensing elements in addition to an electrothermal actuator to enable z-axis positioning. To minimize vibrational coupling in the array, the cantilevers are designed with different dimensions to have distinct resonant frequencies. The measured resonant frequencies of the cantilevers are 29.9 kHz, 35.6 kHz, and 35.08 kHz. The electrical cross-coupling is successfully mitigated. Three tapping mode AFM images are obtained through subsequent use of the cantilevers in the array.