Advanced Nano-object Transfer and Positioning

JRA5 Research addresses the necessary technology development for reproducible nanopositioning. This is a key technical advancement as, today, it is not possible to identify and probe the same nanostructure or the same nano-sized area of a sample at different instruments. Analogously there is a need to develop reliable methods to transfer nanostructure samples that are intrinsically fragile, under controlled conditions from one instrument to another, say from a clean-room to beamlines at a large scale facility. The results of this JRA will be immediately available to TA users enabling absolutely novel experiments by permitting the determination of one-to-one structure property relationships of single nano-objects.

JRA5 OBJECTIVES

Enable reproducible sample positioning, with nanoscale precision, under different experimental probes from clean room to beamlines whilst fully preserving the conditions and properties of the nanostructure.

JRA5 TASKS

T10.1.        Nano-object transfer and positioning protocol ensuring interoperability between nano-instruments and nanofocus X-ray beamlines

T10.2.        Reference marker strategies for Adv Nano-object T&P

T10.3.        Sample environments with interoperability between nano-instruments and ALSFs and integrated Adv Nanoobject T&P for in-situ /in-operando studies

JRA5 DELIVERABLES

D10.1.       Software routine for coordinate definition and relocation of single nano-objects (M30)

D10.2.       Implementation of transfer and positioning system at nanolabs and ALSFs (M30) 

D10.3.       Methods for deposition of array markers for transfer and position system by laser-based lithography (M30)

D10.4.      Methods for deposition of hierarchical markers (M36)

D10.5.       Demonstration of relocating nano-objects based on in-situ deposited fluorescence (M36)

D10.6.       Test experiment of transfer and positioning system to a soft X-ray microscopy setup (M36)

D10.7.       UHV sample transport environment for MBE and neutron reflectometer (M36)

D10.8.       Industry-friendly sample holder providing interoperability and repositioning (M36)