Robot assembly of the smallest house in the world
A French Robot assembly team from the Femto-ST Institute in Besançon, France, developed a new Microrobotics platform that moves forward the frontiers of optical nanotechnologies.
Combining many existing technologies, the μRobotex Nano factory creates microstructures in a large vacuum Robot assembly chamber and fixes components onto optical fiber tips with nanometer precision. The construction of a micro-house, reported from the AIP Publishing Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A, shows researchers how optical sensing Robot assembly technology is advanced when handling ion arms, electron radiator beams, and robotic pilots.
To date, robotic actuators for Nano assembly had not been available in labs-on-fiber engineering, so engineers inhibited construction microstructures on this scale. This technology allows thumbnails to be mounted on fiber tips so that engineers can see and control various components. In order to identify radiation levels and viral particles, optical fibers as small as human hair can be inserted into inaccessible areas such as jet engines or blood vessels.
On the paper, Jean-Yves Rauch, the writer of the text, said that for the first time we have been able to perform patterning and mounting with less than two nanometers of accuracy.
The French engineers
The French engineers put together all engineering components for Nano assembly — a focused ion beam, a gas injection system and a small maneuverable robot — in the vacuum chamber. “These microsystem assemblies are made on top of optical fibers with high precision,” said Rauch. “The microhouse is built on the fiber, which is what I have decided.”
The Building a microhouse is like making a huge dice from a piece of paper, but more advanced instruments are needed for Nano assembly. The concentrated ion beams are used like scissors to slice or scratch out the house’s “film” silica membrane. When the walls fold, on the ion gun is preferred a lower power configuration, which sticks the edges of the framework into the gas injection system. The low-power ion beam and gas injection softly sputter a roof pattern that emphasizes the system’s precision and versatility.
The fiber tip and silica membrane had to be shot by ions guns on only 300 μm by 300 qm in this process. “Piloting the Robot at this crossroads between the two beams is extremely challenging,” said Rauch. He explained that the process was controlled by two engineers on multiple computers. Many steps are already automated, but the team expects all the robotic assembly steps to be automated in the future.
Now, these engineers build usable microstructures using the μRobotex system to detect those molecules by connecting their microstructures to optical fibers. For the construction of smaller structures and their fastening on carbon nanotubes, just 20 nanometers to 100 nanometers in diameter, the nanorobot group expects to push the technical boundaries even further.
