Direct Growth and Fabrication of Tungsten Coated GaN Nanowire Probes on Cantilevers for Scanning Probe Microscopy

Published

May 13, 2022

Author(s)

Kristen Genter, Matthew Brubaker, Samuel Berweger, Jonas Gertsch, Kris A. Bertness, Pavel Kabos, Victor Bright

Abstract

Gallium nitride nanowires (NWs) grown on silicon-on-insulator wafers by means of selective area epitaxy are directly integrated into scanning probe cantilever fabrication. These cantilevers with NW probe tips are coated with tungsten by atomic layer deposition to take measurements on gold embedded in silicon to test the RF response of the cantilever to changes in the material properties. The sensitivity of the cantilever RF capacitance measurement was tested on a microcapacitor calibration sample with 0.7 – 7.1 µm2 microcapacitors on 10 nm SiO2 steps. These probes have an estimated noise-limited sensitivity of 12.5 aF, demonstrating the first RF cantilever with a selectively grown NW probe tip.

Citation

IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems Letters

Volume

31

Issue

4

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/JMEMS.2022.3172645

Local Download

Keywords

Atomic layer deposition, gallium nitride, nanowires, scanning microwave microscopy, tungsten.

Citation

Genter, K. , Brubaker, M. , Berweger, S. , Gertsch, J. , Bertness, K. , Kabos, P. and Bright, V. (2022), Direct Growth and Fabrication of Tungsten Coated GaN Nanowire Probes on Cantilevers for Scanning Probe Microscopy, IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/JMEMS.2022.3172645, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=933785 (Accessed October 27, 2025)