Nanotechnology and

Nanotools
Courtesy of Lauren Willis
 Motivation
• Nanoscale materials and devices are
becoming more and more important and
are showing up in more and more
products we use everyday
 What is Nano?
• A nanometer is one billionth of a
meter
• Nano usually describes things that are
one to 999 nanometers
• At the nanoscale, many physical
properties such as melting point,
optical interactions, etc. heavily
depend on size
• Smaller and smaller transistors are
need to keep Moore’s Law going:
right now, Intel’s smallest transistor is
33 nm
• Nanoscale things cannot be finely
observed with optical light

www.discovernano.northwestern.edu/whatis/index_html/howsmall_html
 How Big is a Billion?
• It will take 31 years to count to a billion
• A gigabyte of memory is roughly a billion
bytes, which is equal to ~250 songs
• One billion pennies would fill five school
buses

www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/nine.asp
 Macroscale

Dime
1.79 cm
People
0.73 – 2.41 m Kindle Head of a pin
20.32 cm 2 mm

10-1 m 10-3 m 10-5 m 10-7 m 10-9 m

1m 10-2 m 10-4 m 10-6 m 10-8 m 10-10 m

Macro Micro Nano

 Microscale

Red blood cells

6 - 8 μm
Copy paper Human hair Pollen grains
thickness 40 - 120 μm 6 - 100 μm
100 μm

10-1 m 10-3 m 10-5 m 10-7 m 10-9 m

1m 10-2 m 10-4 m 10-6 m 10-8 m 10-10 m

Macro Micro Nano

 Nanoscale

DNA (width)
H H
2.2 – 2.6 nm O
Distance between
rows (track pitch) on Water molecule
a Blu-ray disk HIV virus 0.278 nm
320 nm 100 nm

10-1 m 10-3 m 10-5 m 10-7 m 10-9 m

1m 10-2 m 10-4 m 10-6 m 10-8 m 10-10 m

Macro Micro Nano

 Nano-tools

Nano-particles cannot
be seen with an optical
microscope because
they use visible light,
and nanosized particles
fall outside of the visible
range.
 Atomic Force Microscopy
• A sharp tip
scans across a
surface, and the
height is read by
bouncing a laser
off the tip holder
(cantilever)

home.iitk.ac.in/~vajpaisk/
 Atomic Force Microscopy

DNA 3 nm

AFM tip 1.5 nm

0 nm

AFM tip
10 μm
www.xintek.com/products/afm/index.htm

www.unl.edu/ncmn/spm/publications.shtml
 Scanning Electron Microscope
• The electron -e-e-e-e-e-e
beam is scanned
over the sample
• Electrons are
bounced off a
sample and read Detector
by detectors
around the
sample
Mirror (Sample)
 Scanning Electron Microscope
Scales on a peacock feather • Resolution is on the
order of 10
nanometers
• White means that the
sample has reflected
the electrons (like a
mirror)

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SEM_image_of_a_Peacock_wing,_slant_view_2.JPG
Transmission Electron Microscope
• Electrons are
shot at a -e
-e
-e
sample and -e
-e
-e
read by a
detector
below the
sample

Detector
 Transmission Electron Microscope

Tobacco Mosaic Virus • Sub-nanometer

resolution
• Metals/thick samples
appear black, thin
samples appear white

100 nm

www.mardre.com/homepage/mic/tem/samples/bio/virus/tmv1.htm
Scanning Tunneling Microscope
• Resolution is 0.1 nm in the x and y plane
and 0.01 nm in the z direction
STM tip Iron atoms on copper
STM tip

20 nm

www.physics.purdue.edu/nanophys/uhvstm/tip.html www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/corral.html
 AFM vs. STM
AFM STM

3 nm

SPMage Prize http://www.icmm.csic.es/spmage/

www.chem.uga.edu/mlay/nanogallery.htm
Mr Corsin BATTAGLIA. Université de Neuchâtel (Switzerland)