NSF Award
0078536
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to establishing the first-ever, large-scale production capability needed to manufacture carbon nanotube tips for scanning probe tools. To achieve this, the investigator must combine several fabrications technologies in a unique way. The investigator must also solve challenging problems related to the design, structural form and attachment of the tips themselves that will enable them, as the manufacturer, to guarantee that the products sold meets customers' performance specifications. It is believed, for example, that one of their proprietary technologies will enable them to produce carbon nanotube tips that meet the important requirement for adequate stiffness in lateral bending. The core technology being commercialized stems from a new approach for growing a single, aligned carbon nanotube directly on a cantilever, originally identified by the PI. This approach is suitable for fabricating both the carbon nanotube tip and the cantilever in one continuous process, ideal for large-scale manufacturing.<br/><br/>Xidex will develop, manufacture and sell carbon nanotube tips for use with critical dimension atomic force microscopes (CD-AFMs), scanning capacitance microscopes (SCMs), regular atomic force microscopes (AFMs) and scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs)
