AFM Probe Tips

These AFM probe tips have the highest quality for an economy price

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Does the world need another "source" for probe tips?
Up until now, a substantial portion of the world's finest probe tips were manufactured in Europe, not in North America. And during the recent rapid growth in the market size of persons using scanning probe microscopes (SPMs) there has also been a significant "consolidation" in the industry, that is, the technology and manufacturing is controlled by only several vendors and this has worked to limit competition (translate higher prices) and also, reduce the chances for innovation and new discovery.

SPI Supplies could have offered the "standard product lines" of one of the existing SPM probe tip manufacturers. But this did not sit well with us. When we put a product into our product line, we don't want it to be "just another line of probe tips", perhaps with or without the SPI Supplies label. We want it to be special in some way, perhaps enabling one to do things they could not do otherwise or perhaps to allow one to do the same thing but for a lower price. We have found such a product line.

Who is Applied Nanostructures?
Applied NanoStructures, Inc. develops, manufactures and sells various nanostructures including conventional and specialized SPM probes. The manufacturing facility sits literally at "ground zero" of Silicon Valley just south of San Francisco, and literally in the shadow of such famous firms as Intel, and just a few minutes drive from universities such as Stanford. The top management team has had recent work experience with the world's largest manufacturer of scanning probe microscopes and know better than most other people, perhaps more than anyone else, just what constitutes "goodness" in a scanning probe tip. It is unusual for us to be so impressed with the top management of a firm that is a vendor for SPI Supplies. A major research program is continuously underway, both in-house and with external collaborators, to develop high performance probes or what some might call "high end" probes.

The in-house capabilities are impressive. Their class 1000 clean room facility, when combined with state-of-the-art characterization tools, enables rapid prototyping, adoptability and versatility in designing and developing new products for this rapidly expanding field. Customers with special needs for custom probe tips, or structures utilizing micro-fabrication and nano-fabrication, no longer have to send their sensitive and proprietary information outside of the USA. It can all be done right here.

Quality of the Applied NanoScience probe tips:
We define "quality" from the perspective of the end user customer, not from the standpoint of the manufacturer. Our customers have told us repeatedly that for them, the three most important aspects of quality are:

Yield
Does every probe tip give the same performance? We hear constantly that customers find that when they purchase a pack of probe tips from other sources, or even an entire wafer, there seems to be a considerable variation in the performance of individual probes. We won't claim that you won't get a probe that deviates from what it should be on occasion but the frequency of occurrence for these probe tips is clearly much less. This information comes from our customers.

Sharpness
Typical tip sharpness is better than 10 nm.

Shelf life
This is the dirty little secret of the SPM probe tip business. Although we are not 100% certain we ourselves fully understand the mechanism of the tip aging process, we believe it has something to do with the gel surface on which all probe tips are shipped. We have a program underway to develop a different method of shipping the probe tips for longer shelf life. When you purchase probe tips from SPI Supplies, you can be sure that there will be a six month warranty during which we will guarantee that the tips will perform as described. We know that from some sources, probe tips that are quite old get shipped to customers who then are puzzled as to why they can not get reproducible results. If probe tips are being imported from Europe or farther, one does not import small quantities. Only large quantities can be imported economically. But then the shelf life can run out while sitting on the shelf of a distributor. SPI Supplies will manage the business as it does with other perishable products, such as colloidal gold or short shelf life resins, and our commitment to our customers is to always provide fresh product that has some number of months left before it reaches its expiration date.

Selection of the right probe tips:
This is clearly an example where "one size fits all" just does not work. Different users in different applications area have different objectives and are working on different types of samples. For one not familiar with when different types of probe tips should be used for which applications, we would like to provide some guidance. We have broken down the information by industrial application:

Semiconductors

Dept measurement

Data storage

Biological

Special introductory promotion:
For a limited time only, and to bring attention to our distributorship appointment by Applied NanoStructures, Inc., each standard package purchased will contain 20% more probes than indicated on the package labeling. In other words, a pack of 10 probes will come with two bonus probes. A pack of 200 will arrive with the 200 ordered plus 40 bonus probes. This is a special offer and for a limited time only.

Available products:
We now offer the following probe products:

ACL	Long Cantilever, Silicon Tapping (Non-contact)
ACT	Silicon Tapping (Non-contact) Mode
FORT	Silicon Force Modulation Probe
SICON	Silicon Contact Mode Probe
HART0	High Aspect Ratio Probe - No Tilt Compensation
HART3	High Aspect Ratio Probe - 3° Tilt Compensation
HART12	High Aspect Ratio Probe - 12° Tilt Compensation
MAGT	Magnetic Force Microscope

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