What is the purpose of reflective coating?
Reflective coating is deposited on the backside of cantilevers to increase the reflected laser signal and prevent interference of light reflected from the two surfaces of the cantilever (silicon is semi-transparent, so some portion of the incident beam is reflected from the backside, and some from the tip side). The most popular reflective coatings are gold and aluminum. Reflective coating is not used when cantilever already has another type of overall coating (conductive or magnetic). Important! Use uncoated cantilevers whenever experimental conditions may lead to the corrosion of the reflective coating. If you need any probe without the reflective coating, you should specify this in the part number.
