Nanoscale wear affects the performance of atomic force microscopy (AFM)-based measurements for all applications including process control measurements and nanoelectronics characterization. As such, methods to prevent or reduce AFM tip wear is an area of active research. However, most prior work has been on conventional AFMs rather than critical dimension AFM (CD-AFM). Hence, less is known about CD-AFM tip-wear. Given that tip-wear directly affects the accuracy of dimensional measurements, a basic understanding of CD-AFM tip wear is needed. Toward this goal, we evaluated the wear performance of electron beam deposited CD-AFM tips. Using a continuous scanning strategy, we evaluated the overall wear rate and tip lifetime and compared these with those of silicon-based CD-AFM tips. Our data show improved tip lifetime of as much as a factor of five and reduced wear rates of more than 17 times. Such improvements in wear rate means less measurement variability and lower cost.

中文翻译：

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临界尺寸-原子力显微镜头的磨损比较。

纳米级磨损会影响基于原子力显微镜 (AFM) 的所有应用的测量性能，包括过程控制测量和纳米电子学表征。因此，防止或减少 AFM 尖端磨损的方法是一个活跃的研究领域。然而，大多数先前的工作都是针对传统 AFM 而不是临界尺寸 AFM (CD-AFM)。因此，对 CD-AFM 尖端磨损知之甚少。鉴于尖端磨损直接影响尺寸测量的准确性，需要对 CD-AFM 尖端磨损有基本的了解。为了这个目标，我们评估了电子束沉积 CD-AFM 尖端的磨损性能。使用连续扫描策略，我们评估了整体磨损率和尖端寿命，并将这些与硅基 CD-AFM 尖端进行了比较。我们的数据显示，刀尖寿命提高了五倍，磨损率降低了 17 倍以上。磨损率的这种改进意味着更少的测量可变性和更低的成本。