Structure and characteristics of silicon probe tips for atomic force microscopy after plasma treatment

Considerable attention in recent years has. been given to the rapidly developing technique of the chemical force microscopy, CFM, which is capable of providing information on the local chemical structure of matter. The technique consists in enhancing chemical contrast of AFM-images in different ways such as physico-chemical modification of tips or sample surfaces, selection of measuring modes, etc. The authors' results on the modification of probes and construction of model samples for the CFM are presented in the paper.