Abstract

We report on progress in developing compact sensors for atomic force microscopy (AFM), in which the mechanical transducer is integrated with near-field optical readout on a single chip. The motion of a nanoscale, doubly clamped cantilever was transduced by an adjacent high quality factor silicon microdisk cavity. In particular, we show that displacement sensitivity on the order of 1 fm/(Hz)1/2 can be achieved while the cantilever stiffness is varied over four orders of magnitude (≈0.01 N/m to ≈290 N/m). The ability to transduce both very soft and very stiff cantilevers extends the domain of applicability of this technique, potentially ranging from interrogation of microbiological samples (soft cantilevers) to imaging with high resolution (stiff cantilevers). Along with mechanical frequencies (> 250 kHz) that are much higher than those used in conventional AFM probes of similar stiffness, these results suggest that our cavity optomechanical sensors may have application in a wide variety of high-bandwidth AFM measurements.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2012
Volume
20
Number of Pages
18268
ISSN Number
1094-4087
DOI
10.1364/OE.20.018268
URL
https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-20-16-18268
Journal
Optics Express
Contributors