Peel-off probe: a cost-effective probe for electrical atomic force microscopy

Abstract

Full metal probes have proven their suitability for electrical atomic force microscopy (AFM) in the last few years. Such probes could be fabricated cheaper if one reduces the number of steps and processing time. Therefore we have developed a procedure which allows to manufacture full metal probes with only two lithography steps. The etching of thin membranes is dropped which reduces the processing time by 25% compared to our previous procedure. It requires only topside processing. The probes can be peeled off from the wafer due to a special metallization procedure. This paper discusses the process scheme and presents measurements on semiconductor devices.