MRI: Acquisition of a Nanomanipulation Device for Biological Electronic and Optoelectronic Samples and Devices

这项重大研究仪器（MRI）奖为收购Zyvex S100纳米操纵器提供资金，这是一种设计用于扫描电子显微镜内部的手掌大小的设备。 该设备将用于支持以下技术的研究：1）操纵单个蛋白质结构，例如由直径为50纳米和长度为0.1至100毫米的胶原组成的那些结构，2）定位小规模仪器以研究尺寸如何影响结构（例如纳米线）中的机械和电学性质，3）纳米管增强的生物组织的操纵，4）光电子器件的微制造，5）纳米线器件的局部选通，以及6）一般的纳米线合成。 Zyvex S100是一款非常适合学术环境的设备，其用户友好的操纵杆界面将使学生能够快速欣赏和掌握在比可见分辨率更小的尺度上操纵物质的技术。Zyvex S100将使纳米组织工程、计算机工程和航空航天工程领域的研究成为可能。 它将使研究人员能够测试关于健康，患病和工程生物组织行为的假设。 具体来说，它将使当前和未来的研究人员能够研究自然界如何达到生命系统中物质的当前配置，指导病理学家在分子水平上纠正疾病的解决方案，并帮助组织工程师在生命系统首次进化和自组装的规模上工作。 Zyvex S100将促进更小，更快，更便宜的设备的构建，例如由金属或聚合物纳米线构建的设备，这将影响计算，生化质量传感和航空航天工程等领域，其中速度和精度至关重要。 该设备将有助于创建具有定制材料特性的大规模生物组织。 该设备也将是必不可少的设备，以记录生活系统内的疾病相关的高压制造。

This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award provides funds for the acquisition of a Zyvex S100 nanomanipulator, a palm-sized device designed to be used inside a scanning electron microscope. This equipment will be used to support research on the following technologies: 1) manipulation of individual protein structures such as those consisting of collagen with dimensions on the order of 50 nanometers in diameter and 0.1 to 100 millimeters in length, 2) positioning small-scale instruments to investigate how size affects mechanical and electrical properties in structures such as nanowires, 3) manipulation of nanotube-enhanced biological tissues, 4) microfabrication of optoelectronic devices, 5) local gating of nanowire devices, and 6) general nanofiber synthesis. The device is ideally suited for an academic environment due to its user-friendly joystick interface which will allow students to quickly appreciate and master techniques for manipulating matter at a scale smaller than is visibly resolvable.The Zyvex S100 will enable research in the fields of nanoscale tissue engineering, computer engineering, and aerospace engineering. It will enable researchers to test hypotheses regarding the behavior of healthy, diseased, and engineered biological tissue. Specifically it will enable current and future researchers to look at how nature arrived at the current configuration of matter in living systems, guide pathologists toward solutions for correcting disease at the molecular level, and aid tissue engineers working at the scale at which living systems first evolved and self-assembled. The Zyvex S100 will facilitate the building of smaller, faster, cheaper devices, such as those constructed from metallic or polymer nanowires, which will impact fields as diverse as computing, biochemical mass sensing, and aerospace engineering where speed and precision are critical. The device will help to enable the creation of large-scale biological tissues with tailored material properties. The device will also be essential to the fabrication of devices to record disease-related elevated pressures within living systems.