In situ Fabrication and Electric Actuation of Telescoping Nanotube inside TEM through Hybrid Nanorobotic Manipulation System

In situ fabrication and electrostatic actuation of a telescoping multi-walled carbon nanotube are presented. The inner core of the telescoping nanotube is actuated by applied bias voltage with a certain gap inside a vacuum chamber. From modeling analysis, the electrostatic forces are mainly driven force for actuation. At the experimental section, one end opened telescoping multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) is directly observed inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM). The telescoping MWNT is fabricated by peeling off outer layers through destructive fabrication process. Its inner core is extended and retracted with applied DC bias voltage. These processes have been done through a hybrid nanorobotic manipulation system, which are integrated nanomanipulators inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and a TEM. From experimental and analytical results, the possibility of nano-scale actuator applications using telescoping MWCNT with precision has been presented