More recently, scanning probe devices have been enormously successful in biological manipulations at the single molecule level (Engel et al, 1999).
An interesting adaptation of the scanning probe devices has been the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, which uses 'tunnelling' or the flow of electrons from a probe tip to a charged surface and vice versa to generate the contours of a surface (Horber and Miles, 2003), or to move a structure atom by atom.
Meniscus force plays an important part in magnetic storage devices, scanning probe microscopy, and micromachines, because the meniscus force increases steeply as the clearance between solid surfaces decreases down to submicrometers.
Due to their unique mechanical and electronic properties [1, 2], carbon nanotubes hold promise in designing novel nanoscale devices, such as scanning probe tips, field emission sources, molecular wires, and diodes.
These nanostructures provide unique optical, electronic, mechanical, chemical, and other properties that can be very useful for the improvement of electronics interconnects, scanning probes, nanoelectronics, photovoltaic devices, electron field microemitters, light-emitting diodes, and photo-detectors [1, 2].
Nanoscale tips, wires, tubes and rods of semiconductor, ceramic and dielectric materials have been investigated for applications such as probes for scanning probe microscopy, emitters for field-emission-based devices and solar cells [1].
The SSB scheme, a novel magnetic handy probe as shown in Figure 2a, has two major parts, the superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) unit and the scanning probe unit.
Oxidation Scanning Probe Lithography (o-SPL) is an established method employed for device patterning at the nanometer scale.
Prior to the probe-based storage device, nanoscale probe has been widely used for scanning probe microscope (SPM) applications to map out the tomography image of the sample [9].
