Nano knife fabrication and calibration for single cell cutting inside environmental SEM

The current techniques for cell cutting always use a diamond knife with an edge angle larger than 20°. The compression caused by the edge angle may destroy the sample. In this paper, a nano knife with a small edge angle 5° was fabricated from a commercial AFM cantilever by FIB etching. The mechanical character of the nano knife was calibrated by theoretical calculation, numerical simulation and nanorobotic manipulation methods respectively. Single cell cutting was performed by using the nanorobotic manipulation system inside an Environment-SEM. The maximum cutting force was calculated based on the deformation of the nano knife beam. The calibration and experimental result showed the nano knife was capable for cell cutting task. The angle between two cell slices after cutting was around 15°, which means the compression force caused by the knife edge angle can be reduced.