Micromanipulation system using scanning electron microscope

In this study, we aimed to develop a micromechanism in which constituent parts of μm order are used and to establish the handling technology required to achieve this. On the basis of the results of previous studies, we fabricated end effectors driven by a small piece of shape memory alloy (SMA) and succeeded in grasping microobjects on the order of 10–40 μm. However, when the size of an object is 10 μm or smaller, because this size is equivalent to the resolution of optical microscopes, it is necessary to improve and change the design of observation technology to manipulate much smaller objects. In this study, an SEM was used as the observation system and the manipulation system was modified to be compatible with this observation system. A manipulation system for grasping much smaller objects was designed and developed.