Actuators at the nanoscale are assuming great important in todays shrinking electronics industry where a system-on-chip approach is used to integrate multi-functional systems and devices. Integration of sensors, actuators, information processing, and storage have become extremely important, more so at the sub-micrometer scale. Here we utilized vertically aligned carbon nanotube forests bonded onto a piezoelectric substrate to provide sensing of nanoscale forces and actuation on the same platform. This is a demonstration of integration of two important functions using the functionality of nanomaterials. This has immediate utility in many areas including outer space exploration, portable consumer electronics, embedded systems, etc.
@article{arxiv.1609.00870,
title = {Nanoscale force sensor and actuator with carbon-nanotube network},
author = {Zhiping Zhang and Li Huang and Haifei Wang and Tracy Bay and Robinson L. Smith},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.00870},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
13 pages, 5 figures Corrected formatting and minor typographical errors