Diamond-coated cantilevers for scanning capacitance microscopy applications

Diamond-coated cantilevers have been used for Scanning Capacitance Microscopy as an alternative for metal-coated ones in order to improve the stability of probes. It is shown that the diamond-coated probes produce adequate intensity of dC signal and high contrast for both P-type and N-type silicon samples and also provide excellent endurance characteristics. Due to this robustness of the diamond-coated probes, we are able to evaluate the reproducibility of measurements and the large-area homogeneity of the ultra-thin oxide for both dry and wet oxidation. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.