Tip Fabrication and Deposition Process

NADIS tip fabrication comprises two technological steps. The first one is FIB milling of the aperture at the apex of commercially available silicon nitride atomic force microscope tips. The second step consists in controlling the tip surface energy by functionalizing the intact gold film with a SAM. Both steps are briefly described here, and full details can be found in Ref. 43. 

NADIS tips are fabricated by FIB nanofabrication of a small aperture on commercially available, silicon nitride, double-sided. 

Surface chemistry is used to functionalize tip and substrate surfaces with SAMs in order to spatially control their wetting properties. All surface treatments are operated in gaseous phase in a homebuilt vacuum line. Thermally grown Si02 on silicon, 100 nm thick, is used as a substrate, the surface energy of which is tuned 

Such curves provide useful information concerning the deposition process, as will be detailed in section 12.3.3. Several parameters can be optimized in the deposition process in order to control the droplets size for a given tip. The impact of these dynamical parameters is discussed in the next section after the description of the influence of chemical properties of substrate and tip surfaces. 

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