Novel In situ nanomanipulation integrated with SEM-CT imaging system

This paper presents a novel In situ nanomanipulation integrated with scanning electron microscope- computed tomography (SEM-CT) imaging system for 3D nanomanipulation. In our previous works, a nanorobotic manipulation system was established inside an environmental-SEM (E-SEM) for water-contained samples, including biological organism, based on a real-time high resolution SEM observation. However, the SEM image is limited in two dimensional (2D) and surficial information from the signals of secondly electrons. For nanosurgery applications, such as nanoinjection, it is needed to evaluate the sample in 3D space with its internal information after manipulation. The SEM-CT imaging system is developed for In situ nanomanipulation based on SEM observation. The CT is an effective method to obtain the internal 3D information as a non-destructive manner. The imaging resolution of our SEM-CT system is in less than 400 nm. A Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) was used as a target of biological sample. To improve the contrast of SEM-CT imaging of C. elegans, the X-ray was tested by generating using brass and copper materials. Finally, the nanoinjection was demonstrated with SEM-CT imaging system to C. elegans using the nanoinjector which was fabricated by focused ion beam (FIB) process.