Michal Smreczak
Scaling-up nanowire devices: Design of a robotic platform for the advanced and systematic volume testing of nanowire device
Imina technologies SA
The pursuit of miniaturization encourages us to continuously research in all fields related to nanotechnologies. The current technology, developed also within the INDEED project, moves us to nanoscale, where our operational capabilities are severely limited. The ability to operate with such small objects is a challenge, but the ways of optimizing these tasks open a wide field for research and development.
Imina Technologies for many years has been working on successfully
producing robots, capable of operating in microscale, measuring and manipulating such objects. Recently, they have been working extensively on expanding the capabilities of their products, to make the robots work in the nanoscale.
The INDEED project gives me the opportunity to face this task with the example of nanowires used for production of high-performance solar cells. In addition, the project aims to propagate the achieved solutions at the intersection of academic and industrial environments, and thus the results must be well-tested and easy to reimplement.
From the robotics engineer point of view, I evaluate my task as consisting of several minor problems. Each requires the development of a separate solution, preferably universal for use in various applications at this scale.
These problems include:
- force feedback that will allow direct contact with nanowires without risk of damage,
- an accurate way to move a robot, which will not limit the work space too much, while providing enough motion resolution,
- a measuring system that measures the electrical properties ofthe nanowires with sufficient precision,
- intuitive control system for robot to work with nanoscale objects and perform systematic measurements.
The expected result of my work will be the construction of a working robotic platform capable of measuring the parameters of the nanowires received within the INDEED project, as well as the design of procedures which will allow to systematize these activities.
