Those crazy IBM research engineers, what will they create at the nanoscale next? To demonstrate a new material etching technique that could allow for ever smaller computer chip components to be made, they created a model of the Matterhorn that stands just 25 nanometers tall. That's 17,912,000,000,000 times smaller than the 14, 691-foot real mountain. It is even 1.8 billion times smaller than the Disney's Matterhorn ride.
The mini-mountain was created using scanning-probe lithography: a tiny, heated stylus carved the mountain into a film of glass 100 nanometers thick. The whole operation took 120 distinct steps. The research was reported in the journal Science Thursday.
It got us wondering. What are the best things that have ever been carved or etched at the nanoscale? The classic thing to do is write the letters of your company (IBM) or university (MIT). But stranger things abound like the nanobama tiny presidential portrait. Let us know if your lab has done something interesting. We'd love to publish your nanoart weirdness.
"Nanoscale Three-Dimensional Patterning of Molecular Resists by Scanning Probes"
by David Pires, James L. Hedrick, Anuja De Silva, Jane Frommer, Bernd Gotsmann, Heiko Wolf, Michel
Despont, Urs Duerig, Armin W. Knoll in Science Express doi: 10.1126/science.1187851
- Nano-Scale Glassblowing Makes DNA Funnel
- Nanobama: World's Tiniest Candidate Portrait
- The Smallest Welding Job Ever