Laser tweezers take advantage of the forces around converging beams of light to exert slight pressures on small structures. Whereas these optical devices have allowed for some elegant studies of cell biology, wouldn't it be great if we had mechanical tweezers that offered even better manipulation? In a recent paper, Philip Kim and Charles Lieber demonstrated a fabulous device they called “nanotweezers.“

Logically, they used nanotubes as the key structural component for their nanWith nanotubes serving as the tines of the tweezers, Kim and Lieber devised a very clever arrangement for the hub. They took a standard glass tube, 1 mm in diameter, and pulled it to a tapered end of about 100 nm.otweezers. Carbon nanotubes are particularly strong for their size, they conduct electricity, and they can be fabricated as small as 1 nanometer (nm) in diameter. With nanotubes serving as the tines of the tweezers, Kim and Lieber devised a very clever arrangement for the hub. They took a standard glass tube, 1 mm in diameter, and pulled it to a tapered end of about 100 nm. They then evaporated a very thin coat of chromium and then gold on one side, then rotated the rod 180° and deposited metal on the other side. Each coated side operated as an independent electrode.