Automated Nanohandling by Microrobots

“What I want to talk about is the problem of manipulating and controlling things on a small scale” stated Richard P. Feynman at the beginning of his visionary talk “There´s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, given on December 29th 1959 at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology. Today, almost half a century after this first insight into unlimited opportunities on the nanoscale level, we still want – and have to – talk about the same issue. The problem identified by Feynmann turned out to be a very difficult one due to a lack of understanding of the underlying phenomena in the nanoworld and a lack of suitable nanohandling methods. This book addresses the second issue and tries to contribute to the tremendous effort of the research community in seeking proper solutions in this field. Automated robot-based nanomanipulation is one of the key challenges of microsystem technology and nanotechnolgy, which has recently been addressed by a rising number of R&D groups and companies all over the world. Controlled, reproducible assembly processes on the nanoscale will enable high-throughput manufacturing of revolutionary products and open up new application fields. The ultimate goal of these research activities is the development of automated nanomanipulation processes to build a bridge between existing precise handling strategies for micro- and nanoscale objects and aspired high-throughput fabrication of micro- and nanosystems.