Olympus Optical Company, Ltd.

Yasushi Nakamura

Keisuke Saito

Hiroshi Kajimura

Hideo Tomabechi

Jun Funazaki

Hiroshi Tazaki

Akitoshi Toda

Nobuaki Sakai

Katsuhiro Matsuyama

Michio Takayama

An integrated AFM sensor includes a cantilever which has two beams extending from a support portion. The beams are integrated with each other at their ends to form a triangular free end, and a probe having a sharp distal end is arranged at the free end. The cantilever is formed by stacking a passivation layer, a piezoresistive layer, and a silicon layer. Electrodes electrically connected to the piezoresistive layer are formed at the fixed end of the cantilever through contact holes.

Integrated AFM sensor

A scanning probe microscope according to the present invention comprises a cantilever having a free end portion and a fixed end portion, the free end portion bearing a probe thereon, a semiconductor laser attached to the fixed end portion of the cantilever, an optical waveguide for guiding a laser beam, emitted from the semiconductor laser, to the free end portion, an optical element for dividing part of a center beam of the laser beam, guided through the optical waveguide, into laser beams in at least two perpendicular directions, a photoelectric transducer for receiving the divided laser beams and converting the laser beams into electrical output signals corresponding thereto, and a differential circuit for receiving the electrical signals and subjecting the signals to predetermined arithmetic processing, thereby detecting a three-dimensional displacement of the free end portion of the cantilever.

Scanning probe microscope having first and second optical waveguides

Scanning probe microscope utilizing an optical element in a waveguide

Growing community of inventors

Yamanashi, Japan

Yasushi Nakamura