[Spm] blunt pyramidal tips

[Rostislav Lapshin]

Dear Valeria Cassina,

You can take a sharp probe and blunt it as necessary
by scanning a hard surface. We had to deposit a single
particle of colloidal gold 50-100 nm in diameter on
the probe top. To do so, we had to prepare a plane
area on top of the probe of size comparable with the
size of the particle.

By scanning in contact a polished surface of a silicon
wafer with a probe of 10 nm radius, it is fairly easy
to obtain an area of 60-150 nm in diameter using a
test structure TGT01 or TGG01 for size control. The
size of the ground off area depends on the applied
force and the length passed.

Beside you get a well defined area of proper size, you
take still another advantage of this approach. While
measuring, if you press a cell with the same force
that was applied during the blunting, you will always
contact the cell surface exactly with the fabricated
area, not any other part of a bought blunt probe.

Hope that helps. Feel free to contact me offline, if
necessary.

Best regards,

Rostislav Lapshin

Rostislav V. Lapshin, Ph. D.
Staff Scientist
Solid Nanotechnology Laboratory
Institute of Physical Problems named after F. V. Lukin
State Scientific Center of Russian Federation
Zelenograd, Moscow, 124460
Russian Federation

tel (lab): +7 (495) 536-9379, 536-9308, 536-9324
tel (office): +7 (495) 531-9843
fax (office): +7 (495) 531-5592, 531-4656

pri email: rlapshin at yahoo.com
sec email: rlapshin at gmail.com

web: http://www.nanoworld.org/homepages/lapshin/


>From: valeria.cassina at unimib.it 
>To: spm at spmlist.di.com 
>Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:42:28 +0200 
>Subject: [Spm] blunt pyramidal tips 
>
>Dear Colleagues,
>I'm looking for blunt pyramidal tips for cell
elasticity measurements,
>can you suggest me where to buy it?
>
>thank you
>Valeria
>____________________________________________
>
>Dott. Valeria Cassina
>
>Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale
>Facolta' di Medicina e Chirurgia
>Universita' di Milano - Bicocca
>Via Cadore 48
>20052 Monza (Milano)
>Italy
>
>Tel:                    +39-02-6448 8243
>Fax:                     +39-02-6448 8068
>E-mail:          valeria.cassina at unimib.it