Carbon Nanotube: Etching, Indentation

Carbon Nanotube MPEG1 2.04 mb, Carbon Nanotube 512Kb MPEG4 158 kb, Carbon Nanotube Ogg Video 2.03 kb which is a free, open standard container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The OGG format is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia. . animated gif, 3 frames

Contributors: Fedor Dzegilenko, Deepak Srivastava, and Glenn Deardoff

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A carbon nanotube can be used as a tip in an atomic force microscope (AFM).Such a tip in an AFM can be used to create nanoscale patterns i.e. nanolithograpghy or to etch material away from a surface in the fabrication of semiconductor chips(i.e. the tip acts like a " nanotweezer " to remove atoms from the surface).

In the above scenerios, one is then concerned with the interaction between the carbon nanotube tip and a surface. We look at two kinds of surfaces: silicon and diamond. The videoclips show real-time dynamics of interaction between carbon nanotube tips and silicon and diamond surfaces. Two interaction regimes are considered: etching (the nanotube barely touches the surface) and indentation (the nanotube is pushed into the surface to make "nano-holes"). Computer simulations show that in the first regime the nanotube tip is able to selectively extract several silicon atoms off the surface of silicon, and in the second regime it is able to penetrate the silicon surface without much hindrance. That is, the nanotube tip does a good job of both a " nanotweezer " and a " nano hole-puncher " with silicon. But with diamond, the harder diamond surface destroys the nanotube.

This movie is part of the collection: Open Source Movies
Producer: NASA Ames Center for Nanotechnology
Audio/Visual: silent
Keywords: Carbon Nanotube; nanotechnology; NASA
Creative Commons license: Public Domain