A carbon nanofibre scanning probe assembled using an electrothermal microgripper

Abstract

Functional devices can be directly assembled using microgrippers with an in situ electronmicroscope. Two simple and compact silicon microgripper designs are investigated here.These are operated by electrothermal actuation, and are used to transfer a catalyticallygrown multi-walled carbon nanofibre from a fixed position on a substrate to the tip of anatomic force microscope cantilever, inside a scanning electron microscope. Scanningof high aspect ratio trenches using the nanofibre supertip shows a significantlybetter performance than that with standard pyramidal silicon tips. Based onmanipulation experiments as well as a simple analysis, we show that shear pulling (lateralmovement of the gripper) is far more effective than tensile pulling (vertical movementof gripper) for the mechanical removal of carbon nanotubes from a substrate.