A novel method to prepare probes for atomic force spectroscopy

Colloidal probe microscopy is one of the most commonly used techniques to measure interaction forces between microscopic bodies. Colloidal probes are attached to the free end of AFM cantilevers. Usually they have a diameter that ranges from a few microns up to a hundred microns. Here we describe a technique, based on material evaporation, that allows to control continuously the size of the AFM probe from few tens of nanometers to several hundreds of nanometers. This fills the gap between the unmodified commercial AFM probes and the standard colloidal probes.