Nano-Workbench: A Combined Hollow AFM Cantilever and Robotic Manipulator

Nano-Workbench: A Combined Hollow AFM Cantilever and Robotic Manipulator

Pérez Garza, H.
Ghatkesar, M.K.
Basak, S.
Löthman, P.
Staufer, U.

Applied Sciences

QN/Quantum Nanoscience

2015-05-13

To manipulate liquid matter at the nanometer scale, we have developed a robotic assembly equipped with a hollow atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever that can handle femtolitre volumes of liquid. The assembly consists of four independent robots, each sugar cube sized with four degrees of freedom. All robots are placed on a single platform around the sample forming a nano-workbench (NWB). Each robot can travel the entire platform and has a minimum position resolution of 5 nm both in-plane and out-of-plane. The cantilever chip was glued to the robotic arm. Dispensing was done by the capillarity between the substrate and the cantilever tip, and was monitored visually through a microscope. To evaluate the performance of the NWB, we have performed three experiments: clamping of graphene with epoxy, mixing of femtolitre volume droplets to synthesize gold nanoparticles and accurately dispense electrolyte liquid for a nanobattery.

nano-workbench
femtopipette
nanorobot
nanomanipulation
microfluidics
nanodispensing
hollow cantilever
atomic force microscope
OA-Fund TU Delft

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:75de0cbf-3d22-44d3-ad7b-a980bb0e4fc7

https://doi.org/10.3390/mi6050600

MDPI

2072-666X

Micromachines, 6 (5), 2015

Institutional Repository

journal article

(c) 2015 The Author(s)
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)