In situ measurement of Young's modulus of carbon nanotubes inside a TEM through a hybrid nanorobotic manipulation system

A hybrid nanorobotic manipulation system inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and a transmission electron microscope (TEM) is presented. The SEM manipulators have been constructed with 8 degrees of freedom (DOFs) with three units for effective TEM sample preparation. The TEM manipulator consists of a 3-DOF manipulator actuated with four multilayer piezoelectric actuators and a 3-DOF passively driven sample stage. High resolution and transmission image of TEM is readily used for measurement and evaluation of samples. The stage is premanipulated by the SEM manipulator for sample preparations inside the SEM. This methodology is called the hybrid nanorobotic manipulation so as to differentiate it from those with only an exchangeable specimen holder. To show the effectiveness of the system, the Young's modulus of a carbon nanotube (CNT) was measured to be 1.23 TPa inside a TEM after being premanipulated inside the SEM. With this system, we can measure the inner diameter of a CNT and improve the accuracy in measuring the Young's modulus of a CNT.