Nanoengineering of carbon nanotubes for nanotools

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Abstract
We have developed a well controlled method for manipulating carbon nanotubes. The first crucial process involved is to prepare a nanotube array, named a nanotube cartridge. We have discovered ac electrophoresis of nanotubes by which nanotubes are aligned at the knife-edge. The nanotubes used were multiwalled and prepared by an arc discharge with a relatively high gas temperature. The second important process is to transfer a nanotube from the nanotube cartridge onto a substrate in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Using this method, we have developed nanotube tips and nanotube tweezers that operate in a scanning probe microscope (SPM). The nanotube probes have been applied for the observation of biological samples and industrial samples to clarify their advantages. The nanotube tweezers have demonstrated their motion in an SEM and have operated to carry nanomaterials in a SPM. We have also developed the electron ablation of a nanotube to adjust its length and the sharpening of a multiwall nanotube to have its inner layer with or without an end cap at the tip. For the sharpening process, the free end of a nanotube protruding from the cartridge was attached to a metal-coated Si tip and a voltage was applied to the nanotube. When a high voltage was used in the saturation current regime, the current decreased stepwise in the temporal variation, indicating the sequential destruction of individual nanotube layers. The nanotube was finally cut at the middle of the nanotube bridge, and its tip was sharpened to have an inner layer with an opened end. Moving up the cartridge before cutting enables us to extract the inner layer with an end cap. It is evidenced that the maximum current in each layer during the stepwise decrease depends on its circumference, and the force for extracting the inner layer with ~5 nm diameter is ~4 nN.