Measurement of electrical conductivity of micron-scale metallic wires

Electrical conductivities of micron-scale aluminum wires were quantitatively measured by a four-point atomic force microscope (AFM) probe. This technique is a combination of the principles of the four-point probe method and standard AFM. This technique was applied to the 99.999% aluminum wires with 350 nm thickness and different widths of 5.0,25.0 and 50.0 μm. Since the small dimensions of the wires,the geometrical effects were discussed in details. Experiment results show that the four-point AFM probe is mechanically flexible and robust. The four-point AFM probe technique is capable of measuring surface topography together with local electrical conductivity simultaneously. The repeatable measurements indicate that this technique could be used for fast in-situ electrical properties characterization of sensors and microelectromechanical system devices.