Hybrid nanorobotic manipulation system inside scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope

Abstract

A hybrid nanorobotic manipulation system, which is integrated with a nanorobotic manipulator inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM) and nanorobotic manipulators inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM), is presented. The new type of nanomanipulation system has high enough resolution to identify nano-scale objects due to the adoption of a TEM, and efficient and rapid nanomanipulations are realized with wide enough working space of the SEM nanomanipulators. The TEM nanomanipulator has been constructed with 4 multi-layer piezoelectric actuators for driving in 3 translational degrees of freedom (DOFs) and a passively driven 3-DOF sample stage through SEM nanorobotic manipulators to perform relatively complex manipulations whereas to keep compact volume to be installed inside the narrow vacuum chamber of a TEM. To show the effectiveness of the system, the interlayer resistance of a destructively fabricated multi-walled carbon nanotube has been measured inside a SEM whereas the telescoping structure formed by pulling out inner layers from outer layers of the tube is observed inside a TEM.