Electrostatically actuated carbon nanowire nanotweezers

Nanotweezers based on two carbon nanowires by means of localized chemical vapor deposition using a focused ion beam (FIB-CVD) have been successfully demonstrated. The nanotweezers have been constructed on fixed microelectrodes made from a heavily doped SOI wafer using a single-mask and deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) process. The location, dimension and gap between the two nanowires are precisely controlled such that the tweezing motion and the operation voltage can be easily adjusted. Both bent type and straight type nanotweezers with parallel nanowires of 300nm in diameter and 15-19.6νm in length have been built and tested. Experimental results show continuous gap closing movements of 0.6-1.2νm achieved with the operation voltage down to 30V for the prototype devices. The modulus of elasticity of FIB-CVD carbon nanowires also has been measured to be 84.5GPa from the tweezing motion. Potential applications of these nanotweezers include manipulation of nanoparticles and nanoscale objects.