Measuring atto-grams of buoyant mass using silicon dioxide suspended microchannel resonators

In connection with growing in applications of nanoparticles in various industrial sectors such as cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, the demand for in-line identification and characterization of nanoparticles suspended in fluids has increased. In addition to that, nanoparticles in general and nanoplastics in particular, can easily contaminate air...

Resonant Modes of Hollow Micro-cantilevers for Characterization of Liquids in Picolitre Volumes

Micro and Nano-mechanical resonators are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the areas of particle characterization and biological sensing. For biological sensing, however, the presence of a liquid environment is a pre-requisite. Hollow cantilevers, which allow fluids to be transported inside the resonator, often have high quality factors even...

A model for controlled dosing of femto-litre volume liquids using hollow microcantilever

A hollow microcantilever is used instead of a conventional microcantilever to dispense and aspirate liquids in the femto-litre (10^-15 L) volume range in an atomic force microscope (AFM) setup. The inherent force sensing capability of the cantilever is used to monitor the fluid manipulation in-situ. At this small scale, parameters...

Dosing of femto liter volumes using hollow cantilever AFM

The subject discussed in this thesis is the dosing of droplets in the femto (10-15) liter range. In this study, droplets were dispensed using a hollow cantilever atomic force microscope (AFM). Dispensing small volumes finds its applications in for example in single cell manipulation, where a drug is delivered inside a single cell to study the...

Nano-Workbench: A Combined Hollow AFM Cantilever and Robotic Manipulator

To manipulate liquid matter at the nanometer scale, we have developed a robotic assembly equipped with a hollow atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever that can handle femtolitre volumes of liquid. The assembly consists of four independent robots, each sugar cube sized with four degrees of freedom. All robots are placed on a single platform...

A microfluidic AFM cantilever based dispensing and aspiration platform

We present the development of a microfluidic AFM (atomic force microscope) cantilever-based platform to enable the local dispensing and aspiration of liquid with volumes in the pico-to-femtoliter range. The platform consists of a basic AFM measurement system, microfluidic AFM chip, fluidic interface, automated substrate alignment, external...

Development of Nanotools for Applications in (sub-)Femtofluidics and Graphene Technologies

Properties of matter at the nano-scale may be very different from the ones observed at the macro-scale. The continuous variation of characteristics with diminishing size results in relevant changes in behavior. Similarly, these changes are caused by the rise of completely new phenomena (i.e. quantum confinement). Nanoscience can offer an...