Nano-Manipulation Based on Real-Time Compressive Tracking

Quick tracking in nano-manipulation has been attracting increasing attention among scientific researchers and engineers because it can significantly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of nano-manipulation. The main reasons that hinder the improvement of accuracy and efficiency of nano-manipulation are the lack of effective real-time tracking and unavoidable perturbations by uncertainties and nonlinearities in the manipulation system. In this paper, we present a new strategy based on compressive sensing to realize quick real-time tracking nano-manipulation trajectory, and build a new kinematic model for objects to be manipulated to overcome the effect of tip positioning and contacting biases on nano-manipulation with AFM. With this approach, the deviation of the object from the predesigned trajectory during the manipulation can be corrected with up to two-thirds of time less than the traditional method, and the object can be smoothly moved to any destination in the nano-space. The approach requires no priori knowledge about the system, environment, and objects being manipulated. It is validated that this strategy works for both hard regular objects and soft irregular samples by experiments.

I. Introduction

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) [1] is an emerging technology that has drawn considerable attention as a practical tool for observing sample surface topography at micro/nano-scale. Recently, AFM has been widely utilized for nano-manipulation through Van der Waals force or mechanical force between AFM probe tip and samples. Many AFM-based approaches for nano-manipulation have been proposed to successfully manipulate targets at nano-scale [2]–[4], and overall, these approaches consist of four steps: acquiring image of interest region, designing offline strategy for nano-manipulation, manipulating nano-targets with AFM, and validating the nano-manipulation results.