Design and characterization of nanoknife with buffering beam forin situsingle-cell cutting

Abstract

A novel nanoknife with a buffering beam is proposed for single-cell cutting. The nanoknife was fabricated from a commercial atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilever by focused-ion-beam (FIB) etching technique. The material identification of the nanoknife was determined using the energy dispersion spectrometry (EDS) method. It demonstrated that the gallium ion pollution of the nanoknife can be ignored during the etching processes. The buffering beam was used to measure the cutting force based on its deformation. The spring constant of the beam was calibrated based on a referenced cantilever by using a nanomanipulation approach. The tip of the nanoknife was designed with a small edge angle 5° to reduce the compression to the cell during the cutting procedure. For comparison, two other nanoknives with different edge angles, i.e. 25° and 45°, were also prepared. An in situ single-cell cutting experiment was performed using these three nanoknives inside an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM). The cutting force and the sample slice angle for each nanoknife were evaluated. It showed the compression to the cell can be reduced when using the nanoknife with a small edge angle 5°. Consequently, the nanoknife was capable for in situ single-cell cutting tasks.

Vision-based Nano Robotic System for High-throughput Non-embedded Cell Cutting

“…Also, the buffering beam of the nanoknife can be used to measure the cutting force, and protect the nanoknife from breaking as well. More details about the fabrication process and the advantage of the nanoknife can be found in our previous publication 16 .…”

“…Recently, to address the cell cutting task, some new types of nanoknives have been developed by micro-nano fabrication techniques, such as carbon nanotube (CNT) assembly 14 15 , microfabrication 5 , and focused ion beam (FIB) etching 16 . Compared with the traditional ones, these novel nanoknives usually have a sharp edge, by which the compression effect on the cell can be reduced greatly.…”

Recent advances in nanorobotic manipulation inside scanning electron microscopes

“…The AFM cantilever structure can be modified by FIB etching and deposition to create various types of application-specific tools. For instance, AFM probes were modified to have a flat tip 86,89 , stiff needle tip 87,[90][91][92][93] , knife blade tip 94 and fork tips 95,96 for cellular and intracellular characterization and cell manipulation. Tungsten probes are fabricated and sharpened by electrochemical etching to obtain a high-aspect ratio.…”

“…These tools were mounted on a nanomanipulation system in ESEM to perform indentation to determine cell stiffness and viscoelastic properties 87,90 . The nanomanipulation system was also employed to lift and push a cell to measure adhesion forces between the cell and substrate 89,95,156,168 ; to measure cell-cell adhesion force 96 ; and to electrically characterize intracellular properties 36 , as shown in Figures 6d and e. Figure 6f shows the use of a nano-knife for performing cell surgery of a yeast cell 94 . The extraction of DNA from a single-cell nucleus was performed via nanomanipulation under SEM.…”

Multidirectional Image Sensing for Microscopy Based on a Rotatable Robot

“…With the rapid progress of robotic techniques, robots have come to be regarded as powerful systems for research at a small scale [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. For instance, they have been successfully applied for precise manipulation, in-situ characterization, and so on, but little literature has reported the use of a robot for image sensing at a small scale, and even less so for imaging micro samples from multiple directions.…”