SBIR Phase II: Encased Cantilevers for Ultra-Sensitive Force and Mass Sensing in Liquids

SBIR 第二阶段：用于液体中超灵敏力和质量传感的封装悬臂

• 批准号: 1556128
• 负责人: Dominik Ziegler
• 金额: $ 74.71万
• 依托单位: Scuba Probe Technologies
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-04-15 至 2019-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1556128&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Encased; Cantilevers

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will improve the performance of encased atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilevers, reduce their fabrication costs, and optimize their properties for next-generation scanned probe microscopy technologies. Atomic force microscopy is a workhorse technique for providing nanometer-scale information of materials, but its performance is compromised by viscous damping when operated in fluid. The encased cantilevers to be developed in this project significantly reduces damping, leading to high force sensitivity and performance which is identical to AFM imaging done in air. This aids quantitative interpretation of data and simplifies instrument operation. Encased cantilevers are a drop-in replacement, permitting the transformation of existing instruments into cutting-edge tools simply by exchanging the probe. The impacts of these products will be felt in fields from biology to clean energy to materials science.The first technical objective of this research is to create new cantilever geometries that push the performance of our devices to the theoretical limits. The Phase I research resulted in a novel low-cost technique to fabricate encased cantilevers, thanks to the development of specialized semi-automated processing and quality control tools. The next technical objective of Phase II research is to further reduce fabrication costs by improving yields, increasing batch size, and implementing more manufacturing automation. We expect to demonstrate low-cost processing methods in which many high quality probes are fabricated efficiently. The third technical objective is to optimize these devices for next-generation scanned probe technologies including quantitative nanomechanical mapping, high-speed imaging and promising novel techniques such as photo induced force microscopy. At the end of the project period we will have optimized products specifically targeting these high growth applications.

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）II期项目将改善所包含的原子力显微镜（AFM）悬臂的性能，降低其制造成本，并优化其对下一代扫描探针显微镜技术的特性。 原子力显微镜是一种用于提供材料纳米尺度信息的主力技术，但在流体操作时粘性阻尼会损害其性能。 该项目中要开发的包裹的悬臂大大降低了阻尼，从而导致高力敏感性和性能与空气中所做的AFM成像相同。 这有助于对数据的定量解释并简化仪器操作。包裹的悬臂是置换式替代品，仅通过交换探针即可将现有仪器转换为尖端工具。 这些产品的影响将在从生物学到清洁能源再到材料科学的领域中感受到。这项研究的第一个技术目标是创建新的悬臂几何形状，以将我们的设备的性能推向理论限制。第一阶段的研究产生了一种新型的低成本技术，可以制造包裹的悬臂，这要归功于专门的半自动化处理和质量控制工具的开发。第二阶段研究的下一个技术目标是通过提高收益率，增加批量规模并实施更多的制造自动化，进一步降低制造成本。我们期望展示低成本的处理方法，其中许多高质量的探针被有效地制造出来。第三个技术目标是为下一代扫描的探针技术优化这些设备，包括定量纳米力学映射，高速成像和有希望的新技术，例如照片诱导的力显微镜。 在项目期结束时，我们将采用专门针对这些高增长应用的优化产品。