Is there any treatment for changing a silicon nitride tip into hydrophobic?
Coating a tip with silane coupler was reported in a conference. • I am interested in silane treatment for silicon nitride probe. How much oxygen is contained on the surface? According to the result of our latest XPS analysis of silicon nitride film for OLYMPUS cantilever, Silicon, Nitrogen, Oxygen and Carbon are detected on the surface of the film. Our silicon nitride is silicon-riched for reducing the internal film stress. Carbon is due to the contamination layer on the silicon nitride film and its concentration is 11.6%. The carbon is reduced less than 5% by oxygen plasma treatment. Similar reduction is observed by H2SO4 + H2O2. Ethanol works a little to remove carbon from the contamination. 8% of carbon is detected after the ethanol rinsing. Our silicon-rich silicon nitride film contains oxygen and the concentration is less than that of glass, or silicon dioxide. The concentration of oxygen is 10 percents or more and it is one fourth to one fifth of that in glass. This means silane
