Effects of relative humidity on capillary force and applicability of these effects in micromanipulation

This contribution presents the experimental validation of a computational model of capillary forces based on the Laplace equation for the meniscus geometry and on the Kelvin equation for capillary condensation. We apply this to a tip of AFM cantilever ended by a 100 nm curvature tip, and describe the effect of both humidity rate and relative tilt between the cantilever and the substrate. We propose to pick and place components at the considered scale (100 nm) by varying the capillary force.