Contact-pressure reduction of pyramidal optical probe array on corrugated aluminium/silicon nitride membranes

In this study, we develop an optical contact probe array for scanning near-field lithography. We fabricate the optical probes with a pyramidal tip array on an aluminium/silicon nitride composite membrane. Here, we reduce the contact pressure using the corrugations on the silicon nitride membrane and the flattened surface on top of the tip. After fabricating the 5 5 probes in the array, we evaluate the contact pressure using the force-distance curve obtained by an atomic force microscope. The spring constants of the corrugated membranes are 10 0.6 N m^-1. The contact pressure on a flattened 295 nm in-radius is calculated to be approximately 33 MPa for a 300 nm deflection. This value is 22 times smaller than that of a sharp pyramidal tip of 20 nm in-radius on a flat membrane.