What are chip, cantilever, and tip?
Basically a chip is a relatively large piece of silicon to which one or several cantilevers are attached (Fig. 1). Cantilevers (or just levers) are thin beams of silicon or silicon nitride. They usually have rectangular or triangular shape and well-defined mechanical properties. Finally, a tip is a very sharp protrusion at the end of a cantilever, although cantilevers themselves are often referred to as ‘tips’ as in ‘contact tips’, for example.
