Abstract
In relevant investigations and applications of the heated atomic force microscope (AFM) probes, the determination of the actual thermal distribution between the probe and the materials under processing or testing is a core issue. Herein, the polyphthalaldehyde (PPA) film material and AFM imaging of the decomposition structures (pyrolytic region of PPA) were utilized to study the temperature distribution in the nano/microscale air gap between heated tips and materials. Different sizes of pyramid decomposition structures were formed on the surface of PPA film by the heated tip, which was hovering at the initial tip–sample contact with the preset temperature from 190 to 220 °C for a heating duration ranging from 0.3 to 120 s. According to the positions of the 188 °C isothermal surface in the steady-state probe temperature fields, precise 3D boundary conditions were obtained. We also established a simplified calculation model of the 3D steady-state thermal field based on the experimental results, and calculated the temperature distribution of the air gap under any preset tip temperature, which revealed the principle of horizontal (<700 nm) and vertical (<250 nm) heat transport. Based on our calculation, we fabricated the programmable nano-microscale pyramid structures on the PPA film, which may be a potential application in scanning thermal microscopy.
Highlights
In recent years, atomic force microscopy (AFM) based scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) has attracted widespread interest due to a range of potential applications in nanomanufacturing and nanometrology [1]
Using the SThM technique and AFM topography, the thermal transfer and the temperature field distribution in the nano/microscale air gap were investigated through the determination of the formation process and the feature sizes of the heated induced air gap decomposition structures on the PPA material
The results are as follows: (i) Different nano/microscale pyramid air gaps with an approximately rhombic surface contour were formed on the surface of the PPA film by the thermal effect of the heated tip with its location holding at the initial contact point and temperature ranging from 190 to 220 ◦C for the various heating durations (0–120 s)
Summary
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) based scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) has attracted widespread interest due to a range of potential applications in nanomanufacturing and nanometrology [1]. In nanomanufacturing, this technique has contributed substantially to the present nanofabrication methods due to its high efficiency, high precision, and capability to fabricate diversified functional structures [2]. The limitations of the determining environment, the thermal properties of the materials and the different nanostructures on the sample surface to the NTFD methodology measurement have motivated the development of various effective measurement methods [9,13,14,15,16,17,18]
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