SU-8 hollow cantilevers for AFM cell adhesion studies

Auteurs

V. Martinez, P. Behr, U. Drechsler, J. Polesel-Maris, E. Potthoff, J. Vörös, and T. Zambelli

Référence

Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, vol. 26, no. 5, art. no. 055006, 2016

Description

A novel fabrication method was established to produce flexible, transparent, and robust tipless hollow atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilevers made entirely from SU-8. Channels of 3 μm thickness and several millimeters length were integrated into 12 μm thick and 40 μm wide cantilevers. Connected to a pressure controller, the devices showed high sealing performance with no leakage up to 6 bars. Changing the cantilever lengths from 100 μm to 500 μm among the same wafer allowed the targeting of various spring constants ranging from 0.5 to 80 N m⁻¹ within a single fabrication run. These hollow polymeric AFM cantilevers were operated in the optical beam deflection configuration. To demonstrate the performance of the device, single-cell force spectroscopy experiments were performed with a single probe detaching in a serial protocol more than 100 Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast cells from plain glass and glass coated with polydopamine while measuring adhesion forces in the sub-nanoNewton range.

Lien

doi:10.1088/0960-1317/26/5/055006