SBIR-STTR Award

We propose to design and fabricate co-axial electromagnetically shielded scanning microwave probes compatible with atomic force microscopy with very sharp tips (<50 curvature, 10-15 m high) and suitable for near-field microwave scanning of materials in the 1-20 GHz range. Our proposed co-axial probes have an outer metallic ground layer for better shielding at high frequencies due to its smaller skin depth. The inner probe tip consists of an oxidation sharpened silicon tip with very high doping concentration for good conductivity. An oxide layer is used as the insulator. The signal is connected to these tips using a gold co-planar waveguide. Co-planar weveguides can be probed easily and they also provide superior frequency characteristics and isolation between parallel probes. MICC has extensive experience with near-field microwave probes, high frequency instrumentation and measurements and microfabrication techniques.Commercial Applications:The proposed scanning microwave probes have many applications in the semiconductor industries as real-time in-situ nondestructive measurement system for quality assessment and intelligent manufacturing. The commercial market for the SMM as a manufacturing quality assurance tool is around 1B/year in the US alone. It has many other applications in bio and agricultural materials. MICC is working on all these other applications as well.

Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) has become a very popular tool in many areas of inquiry including surface science, semiconductor electronic devices and integrated circuit design and testing, biology and chip-tissue interface, to name a few. Here we propose to develop and commercialize a relatively new family of local probes capable of performing electromagnetic measurements with nearly atomic resolution over a wide frequency range covering up to 100 GHz. Potential applications of these so called near-field or evanescent probes (EMP) are in surface science, chemical sensing, molecular electronics and molecular spectroscopy, biological studies, quantum computing, IC industry and manufacturing quality control to name a few. Composed of a co-planar wave-guide terminated by an AFM compatible cantilever beam with a co-axial tip, these EMP's were designed and tested during a Phase I SBIR and the current proposal is to optimize the performance and fabrication technology. To facilitate their wide spread use by the SPM community, we will also develop a microwave instrumentation unit (MIU) that can be used to retrofit commercial SPM units and enable them to use our EMP's for microwave imaging of various specimens. We will also develop, design and fabricate a variety of calibration samples as standards for EMP calibration and quantification of its output signal. We have estimated that about 100 laboratories around the world would be interested in an add-on package and would be valued at $20000 for a total of $2,000,000. The market for replacement tips would be about 5000 tips at $100 per tip for a total market of $500,000 per year. COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: Quality Control of Semiconductors Microwave Imaging of biological materials, Quality control for the coating market.