Integration of Nanowire based Field Effect Transistors for Micro-Bio-Sensing Using Microrobotic System With Shape Memory Micromechanical Tools

Many modern advances in the field of nano- and microrobotics are used in the creation of a new generation of bionanosensors. Individual semiconductor nanowires (NWs) are considered in biomedical technologies as highly sensitive elements for tracking important biological agents. For this sake the single nanowires are biologically functionalized, and on their basis the active elements are integrated in the configuration of field-effect transistors (FET). This paper reports on experiments on the development of a technology for the designing of nanobiosensor prototypes based on single semiconductor zinc oxide nanowires using a new microrobotic system for nanomanipulation with shape memory actuator elements. The NW nanopositioning was carried out with an accuracy of about 10 nm using a Kleindick nanomanipulator in the vacuum chamber of a cross-beam SEM/FIB microscope. Specially designed thermally controlled shape memory nanotweezers were used to capture a suitable individual NWs from the forest. The corresponding angular arrangement of the NWs and nanotweezers was achieved by a new torsion actuator with shape memory effect, which is combined with the control element of the nanotweezers. The integration of the prototypes of FETs based on zinc oxide NWs was achieved by 3D nanomanipulation of single nanowires 300–15 nm thick and 50-µm long.