AVS 49th International Symposium
    Surface Science Wednesday Sessions
       Session SS-WeP

Paper SS-WeP30
Monolayer Functionalization of Atomic Force Microscopy Tips for Chemical Sensitive Imaging

Wednesday, November 6, 2002, 11:00 am, Room Exhibit Hall B2

Session: Surface Science Poster Session
Presenter: L.W. Zilch, Brigham Young University
Authors: L.W. Zilch, Brigham Young University
A.T. Woolley, Brigham Young University
M.R. Linford, Brigham Young University
Correspondent: Click to Email
While atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides nanoscale information of surface topology, it is often incapable of detecting chemical differences between regions on surfaces. Thus, the usefulness of this technique increases when the AFM tip is chemically modified so as to perform chemical force microscopy. It is then possible to relate tip forces to both surface topology and chemical interactions between the tip and the surface. We are currently working on modifying silicon AFM tips with a variety of organic monolayers using gas and liquid phase silanes (on silicon oxide) or using 1-alkenes (on hydrogen-terminated silicon). Monolayers are advantageous because they do not substantially degrade the resolution of the technique by increasing the radius of curvature of the tip. After coating the tip with a monolayer we then intend to perform a variety of gas phase reactions in the presence of these coated tips to introduce useful functional groups onto them. Ultimately we intend to create an all gas-phase process for functionalizing AFM tips. We will use the resulting AFM tips to study surfaces that have regions of different hydrophobicities and chemical functionalities. Two suggested substrates for testing these tips are silicon and gold surfaces microcontact printed with silanes and thiols, respectively.