Automated Pick-Place of Silicon Nanowires

Recent advances in nanorobotic manipulation inside scanning electron microscopes

“…During the past decade, efforts have been made in automated nanomanipulation (for example, pick-and-place of CNTs 44 and nanowires for mechanical characterization 98 , nanowire field-effect transistor assembly 32 ), nanoprobing for electrical characterization of nanowires and transistors 26,30 , and SEM-guided AFM manipulation for the transfer and stiffness measurement of graphene membranes 28,45 . Automated nanoprobing has demonstrated higher consistency and at least three times faster operation than manual operation 26 , in addition to minimizing the risks of nanotools and sample breakage 30 .…”

“…Automated nanoprobing has demonstrated higher consistency and at least three times faster operation than manual operation 26 , in addition to minimizing the risks of nanotools and sample breakage 30 . Automated pick-and-place of nanowires was completed within 10 min compared with 2 h by teleoperation 98,171 . Although techniques such as visual tracking, depth detection, and the integration of feedback and feedforward control for piezoelectric positioning have been developed for automated nanomanipulation in known environments, system performance may deteriorate in changing environments with uncertain physical parameters and dynamic disturbances.…”

“…Tungsten probes are fabricated and sharpened by electrochemical etching to obtain a high-aspect ratio. They were employed to perform tensile tests for mechanical characterization 97 and pick-and-place assembly 98 , as well as electrical characterization of nanoscaled semiconductor devices and nanomaterials 26,30,99 .…”

“…A manipulation strategy using line and two-point contact to adjust adhesion forces was developed to place the CNT onto a target AFM tip to form a CNT-enhanced, high-aspect-ratio AFM tip for scanning deep trenches 112 . For mechanical characterization, individual silicon nanowires were automatically picked up and placed on a MEMS tensile testing device 98,171 . Via visual recognition and vision-based closed-loop control, a nanowire was picked up from the growth substrate and moved for fixation on the MEMS device with EBID.…”

A review of micro-devices assembly techniques and technology

“…The micro-fabrication and assembly processes were detailed; experiments conducted also demonstrated the reliability of this micro-robot design. Ye et al [81] outlined an automated approach focusing on the pick and place of single nanowires based on visual detection and vision-based motion control technologies. This was used to Kohl et al [15] • SMA thin sheet and two integrated actuations • Folded beam structure with two circular beams…”