Electron beam introduced Cu melting for CNT/Cu hybrid nanowire based on nanorobotics

Abstract

A method of making copper particles melting into mutil-wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) will be presented in this paper. A nanorobotic manipulation system with multiple positioning degrees of freedom (DOFs) was used for the real time nanomanipulation. The nanorobotic manipulation system was constructed inside the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) specimen chamber to pick up MWCNT from MWCNT bulk without any other bounding except van der Waals force and measure the electrical properties of MWCNT and MWCNT/Cu hybrid nanowire. The electron beam was focused on a copper particle cluster of about 200 nm diameter, under SEM. After 5 minutes of electron beam focusing, the melting Cu started to climb into the MWCNT along the wall of the MWCNT. The electrical properties of MWCNT and MWCNT/Cu hybrid nanowire were measured through the model 4200 semiconductor characterization system (4200-SCS). Finally, the electrical properties of MWCNT and MWCNT/Cu hybrid nanowire were plotted on the I-V curves.