A novel cleaning method of gold-coated atomic force microscope tips for their chemical modification

For chemical modification of gold-coated AFM tips with thiol or sulfide compounds, a new two-step precleaning procedure was studied. The two-step cleaning procedure involves (i) oxidation of organic contaminants on the AFM tips with ozone treatment and (ii) reduction of the oxidized gold surface by immersing the oxidized tip into pure hot ethanol at ca. 65°C. The chemically modified tips prepared from gold-coated AFM tips precleaned by the two-step procedure gave almost the same tip characteristics as those chemically modified immediately after gold vapor deposition in a factory. The present two-step cleaning procedure can be used widely for chemical modification of commercially available gold-coated AFM tips with thiol or disulfide compounds for chemical force microscopy.