Optomechanical transducer-based nanocantilever for atomic force microscopy

Reducing cantilever sizes toward the nanoscale enables increased atomic force microscopy (AFM) speed while maintaining high image quality and avoiding sample damage. However downsizing below the optical diffraction limit strongly increases the readout noise to unacceptable levels for conventional far-field beam bouncing detection schemes. Here, we demonstrate fast-scanning AFM imaging with a cavity optomechanical transducer-based nano- cantilever with 2 MHz transduction bandwidth, 4 MHz resonance frequency, sub-picogram mass, 1 N/m stiffness, and 7 fm/Hz^½ displacement sensitivity.