Nano-fabrication and -manufacturing

Nano-science has generated a lot of new knowledge about phenomena in the small world. It is expected that these phenomena contribute to mastering current and future industrial and societal challenges. One of the scenarios how this shall be implemented involves microfabricated instruments and tools for sensing and production. In both cases throughput considerations impose parallel operations of large amounts of instruments. In turn, this requires innovations in the field of microactuation, systems architecture and control, and micro-assembly. This article presents the case of the scanning force microscope that was developed for the Phoenix mission to Mars, addresses the challenges of up-scaling nano-manufacturing, and presents current and future research in Delft.