Augmented reality enhanced nanomanipulation by atomic force microscopy with local scan

Abstract

Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has been used to manipulate nano-objects for more than a decade. However, it is still in the infant stage to serve as a manufacturing tool for fabrication of nanodevices. The major hindrance is the low efficiency due to the absence of visual feedback, positioning errors, and losing objects during manipulation. The lack of visual feedback can be solved by integrating an augmented reality interface into an AFM based nano-robotic system. Through the augmented reality interface, the operator can manipulate the nano-objects and simultaneously observe the real-time changes of the nanoenvironment. Position errors caused by thermal drift and nonlinearity of piezoactuators often lead the AFM tip to a wrong position and in turn miss the nano-objects. Due to the small touching area between AFM tip and the object, the tip often slips over or slips aside the nano-object during manipulation. All these problems can be solved by introducing a local scan mechanism to the AFM based robotic system. The local scan strategies will improve the reliability of the visual feedback, therefore, significantly improve the efficiency of AFM based nano-manipulation. In this paper, the augmented reality interface is briefly introduced. And then the local scan strategies are proposed to eliminate the positioning errors, relocate the actual position of nanoobjects, and find back the nano-objects if they are lost during manipulation. The paper finally demonstrates that single carbon nanotube (CNT) based nano-sensors can be fabricated by the AFM based nano-robotic system assisted by local scan. Copyright © 2007 by ASME.