Scientists have developed a microscopic force sensor

Physicists from Russia, Belarus and Spain have developed a microscopic force sensor in your device using carbon nanotubes. Description of the sensor is presented for publication in the Journal of Computational Materials Science, with its concise content available on the website of the Moscow Physical-Technical Institute.

The apparatus consists of two nanotube ends are placed opposite each other. To the ends of the applied voltage and a current force of about ten nA passes between the two ends due to the tunnel effect. The value of external force to change the device determines the distance between the ends of the nanotubes, which determines the strength of the tunneling current.

The sensor is able to control the mutual arrangement of microscopic nano-objects and the degree of deformation; value of the force, which can measure the device is of the order nanonewton tenth; For comparison, the weight of a mosquito almost a hundred thousand times more.

Tunnel effect - a quantum mechanical phenomenon is the existence of a nonzero probability for a particle to overcome the potential barrier even when the particle energy is not enough. In classical physics, this particle could not have emerged from within the potential well. An example of a device operating on the principle of the tunnel effect, a tunneling microscope.

Scientists are considering using a force sensor as a magnetic field sensor. With this purpose in the Physics collected fullerenes magnetic input device.