Multimodal Electrothermal Silicon Microgrippers for Nanotube Manipulation

Microgrippers that are able to manipulate nanoobjects reproducibly are key components in 3-D nanomanipulation systems. We present here a monolithic electrothermal microgripper prepared by silicon microfabrication, and demonstrate pick-and-place of an as-grown carbon nanotube from a 2-D array onto a transmission electron microscopy grid, as a first step toward a reliable and precise pick-and-place process for carbon nanotubes.