Hydrophilic silicon nitride

Microfabricated tips of silicon nitride or silicon oxide are naturally hydrophilic. One should, however, keep in mind that they might contaminate and as a result become hydrophobic. 

To gain further insight into the predominance of the tip surface chemistry on other parameters, we fabricated tips with more complex surface functionalizations by combining FIB machining and surface chemistry. The gold coating was removed by FIB to define a hydrophilic oxidized silicon nitride zone around the tip apex. Figure 12.9b shows an array of deposits performed with such a... 

Micromachined silicone nitride microsieve Flat Hydrophilic 2-7 pm 4 mm Abrahamse et al. (2002), Gijsbertsen-Abrahamse et al. (2003), Zhu and Borrow (2005)... 

Figure 5.9 Adhesion force versus relative humidity curves, (a) A hydrophilic glass sphere of 20 pm radius interacting with a naturally oxidized silicon wafer as measured by AFM [493]. (b) Force between a microfabricated silicon nitride AFM tip and a silicon wafer [553].

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