Bull, M.S. et al. ACS Nano doi:10.1021/nn5010588 (26 March 2014).

In atomic force microscopy (AFM) applications, cantilever choice heavily influences measurement performance. Two important characteristics are short-term force precision and long-term force stability. Previous work by Tom Perkins and colleagues showed that removing the gold coating from long cantilevers provided superior stability but that temporal resolution and force precision were not as good as with short cantilevers. Now, Bull et al. demonstrate how the removal of most of the arm of short cantilevers by focused-ion-beam milling increases long-term force stability and short-term force precision. The sensitivity conferred by the gold coating was retained by removing all of the gold except for in a region near the end that had no negative impact on stability. The modified cantilevers are relatively easy to make and provide high performance in a wide variety of applications, thereby eliminating most of the compromises inherent in cantilever choice.