Engineering Physics

13.4 Fabrication

Fabrication applies to the building of machines, structures or process equipment by cutting, shaping and assembling components made from raw materials. In nanotechnology, the scanning instruments help to a large extent in the development of nanoscience. In these instruments, the tip of the probe slides along a surface. The tip has nanoscale dimensions, usually of single-atom size. During sliding, the instrument measures different properties. To determine these properties, there are different types of scanning probe measurements. They are described in brief below.

(i) Atomic force microscopy (AFM): In this, electrons are used to measure the force applied on the probe tip as it moves on the object surface.

(ii) Scanning tunneling ...