Nanotool exchanger system using low-melting metal under environmental SEM

This paper proposes a new nanotool exchanger system using low-melting metal under Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (E-SEM). We developed an E-SEM nanorobotic manipulation system for biological specimen analysis in nano-meter scale. The nanomanipulation system has multi-degrees of freedom and multi-units. The “nanotools” proposed to realize flexible and complex nano-scale stiffness measurement, adhesion force measurement, cutting, injection, and so on. In this paper, we develop a nanotool exchanger system, which mainly consists of nanotool adapter, nanotool holder, and nanotool attachment for various types of nanotools. At first, the nanotools are fixed in the nanotool holder with nanotool adapter. The nanotool adapter is designed to hold the various types of nanotools. To apply nanotools to some samples, the nanotool attachment is used to fix the nanotool as an end-effector of nanomanipulator with nanotool adapter. Through the nanotool exchanger system, it is not needed to open the sample chamber to exchange the nanotools and to evacuate the sample chamber pressure.