Fabrication of nanotweezers and their remote actuation by magnetic fields

A new kind of nanodevice that acts like tweezers through remote actuation by an external magnetic field is designed. Such device is meant to mechanically grab micrometric objects. The nanotweezers are built by using a top-down approach and are made of two parallelepipedic microelements, at least one of them being magnetic, bound by a flexible nanohinge. The presence of an external magnetic field induces a torque on the magnetic elements that competes with the elastic torque provided by the nanohinge. A model is established in order to evaluate the values of the balanced torques as a function of the tweezers opening angles. The results of the calculations are confronted to the expected values and validate the overall working principle of the magnetic nanotweezers.