Miniaturized fibre-top cantilevers on etched fibres

Fibre-top probes are self-aligned, all optical devices obtained by carving a cantilever on top of a 125-μm diameter single-mode optical fibre. In this paper, we show that this design can be adapted to smaller fibres as well. We evaluated the performance of a 20-μm diameter probe in contact mode atomic force microscopy (AFM) and that of a 50-μm diameter probe in nanoindentation measurements. AFM images proved to be accurate both in air and water, although some distortion was observed because of the mechanical bending of the fibre during scanning. Indentation curves resembled those obtained with larger devices. The maximum indentation depth, however, is limited by the small dimensions of the cantilever.