An easy-to-use non-optical shear-force distance control for near-field optical microscopes

We present an easy-to-use non-optical shear-force detection system for tip–sample distance control in scanning near-field optical microscopes. The fibre tip is fixed in a four-segmented piezo-tube by a polymer, Polyisobutylene, which couples the tip stiffly to the piezo at frequencies of 10 kHz or more at room temperature. One segment of the piezo-tube excites the fibre tip in resonance, while the other three segments detect the tip vibration in the manner of a piezo-microphone. When the tip is damped by shear forces the induced voltage at the three segments changes and can easily be detected with a lock-in amplifier. Further our method allows a fast and reproducible tip exchange with minor adjustments of mechanical or electrical components. We demonstrate the performance of our distance control on a holographically fabricated line pattern with 417 nm lattice spacing and 10 nm height. A height resolution of better than 1 nm is demonstrated.