I was wondering if any commercial Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has been made by any company that only uses piezoelectric cantilevers instead of laser beam sensor for deflection measurement of the cantilever tip.
To my knowledge, no.
There are a number of disadvantages to doing this, namely: the brittle nature of piezoelectric materials; the cost of making such cantilevers compared to silicon; you would need to calibrate the voltage response of each cantilever to deflection to understand the magnitude of deflection; you would need electrical connections at both ends of the cantilever, adding mass and slowing the resonant frequency.
That is not to say that you shouldn't try to do it of course! There may be serious advantages, but generally the optical lever is a well tried method which gives rapid, reliable detection.
Profilometer - yes (eg gramophone:]), AFM -no. Some trials but only for knowledge. Don't know about commercially available equipment.
See http://www.sclsensortech.com/ and
http://www.nanotechnik.com/sf-afm.html
only for sensing with piezo resistive technology and contact mode and oscillating mode with thermal actuation
Another way with tuning fork mixed with silicon cantilever : Akiyama Probe but only dynamic mode
Historically, first NCAFM atomic resolution was achieved in 1994 by Giessibl with piezoresistive cantilever made by Tortonese
Thank you Dominique. It was really helpful. Thanks for the provided links.
Not that I would know. Omicron, Createc and RHK use the piezoelectric qPlus sensor, however in frequency-modulation AFM.
There are actually several companies that do this (Hitachi (http://www.hitachi-hitec-science.com) , Specs (http://specs.de), GE-Tec,(http://getec-afm.com), Kleindiek (http://www.nanotechnik.com),... and probably several more small companies. But there are only very few commercial suppliers for piezo-sensing cantilevers.
There is an Austrian company (http://www.sclsensortech.com/5.0.html) producing and selling self sensing cantilevers based on piezo resistive sensing and thermal actuation. They are especially designed to be used for purposes where laser read out is not possible or where free space above the cantilever is required. For a prototpye this cantilevers have been implemented on a Keysight (Agilent) 5500 AFM at JKU and used for conatct and tapping mode imaging in dry state as well as in liquid. An additional application for this cantilevers comes from GETec (http://www.getec-afm.com/index.php?id=10) using them for an AFM-SEM combination by using a special commercial available scanner.
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