Deterministic Assembly of Individual Carbon Nanotubes/Nanofibers for Nano Scanning Tip Production
Soohyung Kim, Sang-Gook Kim
Preserving the nano-scale properties of carbon nanotubes/nanofibers (CNs) is necessary when they are assembled to larger-scale devices. Deterministic assembly of individual CNs to micro-scale structures is achieved by encasing individual CNs into micro-scale polymer carriers and transplanting them to the target locations. An array of vertically aligned single-strand CNs was grown at predefined locations on a silicon substrate. Then each CN was encapsulated into a dual-layer polymer block that serves as a carrier. Two layers of polymers with different etching selectivity were used for controlling the release of CN-bearing blocks and the exposed length of CN tips after the assembly. Various CN-tipped AFM probes were assembled by transplanting individual CNs to microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) cantilevers in a deterministic and reproducible manner. We also showed that transplanting assembled CN-tipped AFM probes could be used for sensing and imaging nano-bio-objects. Transplanting assembly enables even manual assembly of a CN-tipped AFM probe to be done in minutes excluding the adhesive curing time. We believe that this assembly method can be scaled up and automated to make a massive parallel array of nanostructures for high throughput sensing and imaging applications.
APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 94, 193102 2009
Transplanting Carbon Nanotubes
Tarek A. El-Aguizy, Jeong-hyun Jeong, Yong-Bae Jeon, W. Z. Li, Z. F. Ren and Sang-Gook Kim
Applied Physics Letters, vol. 85, No. 25, 2004
