Fabrication of a polymer-metal combined atomic force microscopy probe for coarse food surface imaging.

We fabricated a polymer-metal combined atomic force microscopy (AFM) probe by two steps; a polymeric resin was used at first step, and a metal-ion was used at second step which needs more fabricating time than the resin. At first step, we fabricated a cylindrical base on to a commercial cantilever. At second step, we fabricated a conical probe on to the fabricated cylindrical base. To make the conical probe composed with silver, a 0.2 M aqueous solution of silver nitrate (AgNO3) was used. A 50 microm length polymeric-metallic hybrid tip has been fabricated to observe large bio and food samples. Generally, the AFM images of bio/food samples show cliff-like sharp patters in vertical. However, the AFM image by fabricated long tip shows clear structure of each brown rice flours. As most of commercial tips have three-angular pyramidal, the scanned results should be influenced by the lateral face of the three-angular pyramid, which results in cliff-like images. Because the sample size is large, the side area of the sample was adversely affected by the pyramidal structure during imaging. This problem may be resolved by designing conical structure tips. As the conical structure has no edge, the AFM image becomes clear. The fabricated tip has conical structure, and a clear AFM image was achieved.