Fabrication of high-quality SNOM probes by pre-treating the fibres before chemical etching |
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| Authors: | JING YANG JIASEN ZHANG ZHI LI & QIHUANG GONG |
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| Affiliation: | Department of Physics and State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China |
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| Abstract: | A new method to fabricate high‐quality fibre probes for scanning near‐field optical microscopes by pre‐treating the fibre before chemical etching was proposed and implemented. In the pre‐treating process, the diameter of the fibre is reduced to a range of 7 –20 μm by etching one end of the fibre in the HF solution and a taper angle is formed simultaneously. Then the tapered part of the fibre is coated with a thick layer of plastic film and etched in the HF solution again. High‐quality probes are obtained with an apex diameter as low as ～20 nm and a large cone angle. |
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| Keywords: | Chemical etching fibre probe SNOM |
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