FABRICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF OPTOELECTRONIC NEAR-FIELD PROBES BASED ON AN SFM CANTILEVER DESIGN

For the setting-up of near-field optical microscopes, the development of and investigation into new near-field probes is of fundamental impo rtance, Up to now, the probes have predominantly been used as passive elements. In contrast to this practice, the principle of the optoelect ronically active probe which has been presented on the NFO-1 conferenc e in 1992 (H.U. Danzebrink and U.C. Fischer, in: Near Field Optics (Kl uwer, Dordrecht, 1993) [1]) will allow signal conversion into an elect rical measuring signal to be directly integrated into the near-field p robe itself. It will thus be possible to realize compact near-field mi croscopes without further waveguide structures or external photodetect ors being necessary. The application of this principle to the microlit hographic manufacture of optoelectronic probes is the main topic of ou r work in progress. These near-field probes are inserted in a Scanning Force Microscope (SFM) and measure simultaneously the topography as w ell as the optical near-field signal.