November 3, 2009 – Carbon Design Innovations Inc. (CDI) has received a technology patent (US #7,601,650) for a variety of methods and techniques for fabricating carbon nanotube (CNT) devices, notably atomic force microscopy (AFM) probes.
The process for making the CNTs — formed on a substrate using thermal CVD, covered via another CVD with a protective layer (e.g. SiO2, and then etched (e.g. using ion beam, reactive ion, and wet etc) to expose to a desired length — "allows us to reliably produce longer CNTAFM probes than has been previously possible," said company CEO Vance J. Nau, in a statement.
The AFM probes with these CNTs are stronger, stiffer, and more durable, and less likely to "crash" during a scan, the company claims. The longer lifetime also means more consistent scan-to-scan images, less time spent changing and aligning AFM tips, or normalizing results between scans resulting from probe changes.
CDI currently offers two CNT AFM probe types: a standard carbon core high-aspect ratio (CCHAR, samples 1- >3μ z-range) and carbon core high-resolution (CCHR).
Top row: CCHAR product schematic and image. Bottom row: CCHR product schematic and image. (Source: Carbon Design Innovations)