Reference Materials to Enable Precise and Accurate Imaging with Electrical Scanning Probe Microscopes

Published

March 21, 2017

Author(s)

Joseph J. Kopanski, Lin You, Yaw S. Obeng

Abstract

Electrical scanning probe microscopes (eSPMs), such as the scanning Kelvin force microscope (SKFM), scanning capacitance microscope (SCM), or various scanning microwave microscopes (SMMs) are sensitive to the electric field between the sample and tip. Interpretation of measurements with these techniques can be confounded due to unknown tip shape and volume of interaction with the sample. Any two-terminal electrical measurement of electric field, capacitance, resistance, or inductance depends on the shape of the electrodes at each terminal. For complex electrode shapes varying in three dimensions, such as eSPMs, direct extraction of material properties is impossible without detailed information about the shape of the electrodes. This work describes simulation, design and preliminary measurements of reference materials with precisely known geometries that will allow precisely calculable electric field gradients at a sub-micrometer scale to be generated. These structures have two intended uses: 1) as reference materials to determine the actual spatial resolution and accuracy of various eSPM techniques sensitive to electric field with different conductive tip technologies; and 2) as an electrical tip shape profiler. Electrical tip shape may vary significantly from physical tip shape. Knowledge of the electrical tip shape can then be fed back into image analysis software to improve the spatial resolution and accuracy of electric field measurements.

Conference Dates

March 21-23, 2017

Conference Location

Monterey, CA

Conference Title

The 2017 International Conference on Frontiers of Characterization and Metrology for
Nanoelectronics

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Electric field measurement, scanning Kelvin force microscope, scanning probe tip profiler, reference materials

Citation

Kopanski, J. , You, L. and Obeng, Y. (2017), Reference Materials to Enable Precise and Accurate Imaging with Electrical Scanning Probe Microscopes, The 2017 International Conference on Frontiers of Characterization and Metrology for Nanoelectronics, Monterey, CA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=922980 (Accessed April 29, 2026)

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