Colloid probes with increased tip height for higher sensitivity in friction force microscopy and less cantilever damping in dynamic force microscopy.

We present a method how to glue small spheres to atomic force microscope cantilevers. In difference to an often used approach where the sphere is glued to a tipless cantilever, we suggest to mount small spheres to a conventional cantilever with integrated tips modified by a focused ion beam. In this way it is possible to manufacture a spherical probe with increased tip height which enhances the sensitivity in friction force microscopy and reduces the cantilever damping in dynamic force microscopy. By milling cavities for the spheres at the tip apex the colloid particles can be attached at defined positions and contamination with glue can be prevented.

Single beam optical tweezers setup with backscattered light detection for three-dimensional measurements on DNA and nanopores.

We introduce a versatile and high precision three-dimensional optical tweezers setup with minimal optical interference to measure small forces and manipulate single molecules in the vicinity of a weak reflective surface. Our tweezers system integrates an inverted optical microscope with a single IR-laser beam that is spatially filtered in an appropriate way to allow force measurements in three dimensions with remarkably high precision when operated in backscattered light detection mode. The setup was tested by overstretching a lambda-DNA in x and z directions (perpendicular and along the optical axis), and by manipulating individual lambda-DNA molecules in the vicinity of a nanopore that allowed quantitative single molecule threading experiments with minimal optical interference.