By forming an appropriate material layer, such as a metal-containing material, on a appropriate substrate and patterning the material layer to obtain a cantilever portion and a tip portion, a specifically designed nano-probe may be provided. In some illustrative aspects, additionally, a three-dimensional template structure may be provided prior to the deposition of the probe material, thereby enabling the definition of sophisticated tip portions on the basis of lithography, wherein, alternatively or additionally, other material removal processes with high spatial resolution, such as FIB techniques, may be used for defining nano-probes, which may be used for electric interaction, highly resolved temperature measurements and the like. Thus, sophisticated measurement techniques may be established for advanced thermal scanning, strain measurement techniques and the like, in which a thermal and/or electrical interaction with the surface under consideration is required. These techniques may be advantageously used for failure localization and local analysis during the fabrication of advanced integrated circuits.
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