100×100 Thermo-piezielectric cantilever Array for SPM Nano-data-storage Application

Abstract

A PZT cantilever array with integrated heaters and piezoelectric sensors, termed a thermo piezoelectric cantilever has been fabricated and studied for application to a highspeed and low-power scanning probe microscopy (SPM)-based nano-data-storage system. In this system, the data are written using a heater and read using a piezoelectric sensor integrated with the cantilever. By the use of a piezoelectric readback method, power consumption during the read/write process can be lowered considerably. With the thermopiezoelectric cantilever we can successfully write 40 nm data bits on the polymer media, polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA). The sensitivity of the PZT piezoelectric sensor was 0.55 fC/nm. The charge readback signal of the cantilever was obtained using a patterned SiO2 sample. To improve the data rate, we developed a (100×100) 2D thermo-piezoelectric cantilever array for parallel operation.