This minute pair of silicon tweezers can snap off a carbon nanotube just 100 nanometres across and deposit it on the tip of a microscope. The feat could herald more precise and versatile nanoscale construction techniques.
Working with nanotubes and wires is a tricky business. They are usually chemically grown on a surface, but only certain kinds can be made to sprout precisely where they are needed. They can also be shunted a short way along a surface, but until now there has been no way to pick them up and move them around as precisely in three dimensions.
Peter…
