Laterally driven linear electrostatic micromotors have been fabricated by standard surface micromachining. We attempt to employ mechanical leverage with the aim to increase the force from the order of 1 μN up to the order of 0.1 mN, in combination with walking motion to increase the stroke to virtually unlimited. Three designs have been made and tested. We conclude that mechanical levers with p...

The force between two parallel charged flat surfaces, with discrete surface charges, has been calculated with Monte Carlo simulations for different values of the electrostatic coupling. For low electrostatic coupling (small counterion valence, small surface charge, high dielectric constant, and high temperature) the total force is dominated by the entropic contribution and can be described by m...

We investigate insulating Cu2N islands grown on Cu(100) by means of combined scanning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy with two vastly different tips: a bare metal tip and a CO-terminated tip. We use scanning tunneling microscopy data as proposed by Choi, Ruggiero, and Gupta to unambiguously identify atomic positions. Atomic force microscopy images taken with the two different t...

For measuring the surface profile of many micro-optical components with complicated shapes, which are made of non-conductive material, the electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) was recommended. The relationship between the polarization force and the tip-to-sample distance was analyzed based on dielectric polarization theory. The prototype of the scanning electrostatic force microscopy was built....

By applying atomic force microscope (AFM)-based force spectroscopy together with computational modeling in the form of molecular force-field simulations, we have determined quantitatively the actuation energetics of a synthetic motor-molecule. This multidisciplinary approach was performed on specifically designed, bistable, redox-controllable [2]rotaxanes to probe the steric and electrostatic i...

We present and demonstrate a novel imprint method, electrostatic force-assisted nanoimprint lithography (EFAN), where a voltage applied between a mold and a substrate generates an electrostatic force that presses the mold into a resist on the substrate. We have successfully used EFAN to pattern nanostructures in a photocurable resist spin-coated on a wafer, with high fidelity and excellent unif...

The multilevel summation method (MSM) offers an efficient algorithm utilizing convolution for evaluating long-range forces arising in molecular dynamics simulations. Shifting the balance of computation and communication, MSM provides key advantages over the ubiquitous particle–mesh Ewald (PME) method, offering better scaling on parallel computers and permitting more modeling flexibility, with s...

We present the implementation of dynamic electrostatic force microscopy in liquid media. This implementation enables the quantitative imaging of local dielectric properties of materials in electrolyte solutions with nanoscale spatial resolution. Local imaging capabilities are obtained by probing the frequency-dependent and ionic concentration-dependent electrostatic forces at high frequency (>1...