Nanotool exchanger system based on E-SEM nanorobotic manipulation system

A novel nanotool exchanger system is proposed based on Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (E-SEM) nanorobotic manipulation system. We proposed to use the E-SEM nanomanipulation system for the analysis of biological specimen using various “nanotools” to realize flexible and complex nano-scale stiffness measurement, adhesion force measurement, cutting, and injection. The E-SEM can use to observe the biological samples in nano-scale and real-time without any drying or dyeing processes. As previous works, we applied the system to manipulate biological specimens, such as Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) and yeast cells. To maintain the livable condition of biological cells, it is important to reduce the exchange time of the nanotools. This is also important to improve the efficiency of biological specimen analysis using various nanotools without break the chamber pressure. This paper presents a novel nanotool exchanger system for exchanging different nanotools within the ESEM chamber. Through the nanotool exchanger system, the following advantages are mainly obtained, 1) it is not needed to open the sample chamber to exchange the nanotools and to evacuate the sample chamber pressure again, 2) it is not needed to operate manually to exchange nanotools, 3) it is possible to recover the nanotools by exchanging new one, 4) it is possible to use different tools continuously. Firstly, the design and fabrication are presented for the proposed nanotool adaptor, nanotool attachment and nanotool holder. Finally, we demonstrate to exchange the different nanotools based on E-SEM nanomanipulation system.