Force-calibrated AFM with rhombus-shaped cantilever for bending test of micro/nanoscale thin films

In this paper, force-calibrated AFM device with a novel rhombus-shaped AFM cantilever has been demonstrated for bending test of micro/nanoscale thin films. The rhombus-shaped AFM cantilever is designed to be symmetric around the loading axis, and thus robust to the lateral movement that a conventional beam-shaped AFM cantilever may have. This new cantilever structure has been fabricated and assembled with the AFM to measure the mechanical properties of gold strip specimens. With appropriate calibration procedures, this system can improve the measurement accuracy of the strip bending test.