“a Review on Carbon Nanotube Probes for Microscopy Applications”

Carbon nanotubes have been of great interest because of their simplicity and ease of synthesis. The novel properties of nanostructured carbon nanotubes such as high surface area, good stiffness, and resilience have been explored in many engineering applications. Research on carbon nanotubes have shown the application in the field of energy storage, hydrogen storage, electrochemical supercapacitor, field-emitting devices, transistors, microscopy, nano probes and sensors, composite material, templates, etc. We present a set of ongoing contributions to enhance the performance of AFM (atomic force microscopy) by attaching carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on silicon cantilever tips so that they can work as a probe. Examples of CNT-probed microscopy are reviewed and categorized into two major methods: a gluing method in which CNTs grown somewhere else are bonded on the tips, and a growing method in which CNTs are directly grown from the apex of tips by a CVD (chemical vapour deposition) process. Related topics such as fabrication issues, physics involved during the measurement using as-fabricated probes, improvements in resolution, and limitations of each method are also discussed.