Electrothermal microgrippers for pick-and-place operations

Manipulation of carbon nanotubes to assemble functional devices can be done inside a scanning electron microscope in which a suitable combination of visual resolution and sample space allows macroscale manipulators with micro- or nanoscale precision to be incorporated, yet monitored with nm-scale precision. The pick-and-place procedure can be done in several ways. We present here a monolithic electrothermal microgripper, and demonstrate pick-and-place of an as-grown carbon nanotube from a 2D array onto a scanning probe tip, as a first step towards a reliable and precise pick-and-place process for carbon nanotubes.