Development of thermoresponsive gel probe for manipulation from micro to nano scale

In this paper, we developed the thermoresponsive gel probe (GeT probe) to conduct micro-nano manipulation under an optical microscope. We developed the GeT probe to use in the solution which is not containing thermoresponsive polymer. The fixation force by the probe was measured using an atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever. The evaluation of the probe showed that the probe can generate almost the same fixation force in thermoresponsive polymer solution and in the pure water. The developed GeT probe has more than 50 μm tip size and it makes difficult to handle sub-micron objects. Therefore, the new fabrication procedure to miniaturize the probe tip was also proposed to manipulate nano-scale objects. The fabrication method has the potential to minimize the probe tip in sub-micron scale.