In a feat of nano science that makes every man on Earth subconsciously think “yeah, my wiener is way bigger than that“, and Ms. Frizzle from Magic School Bus say “Damn it, that’s too small!”, IBM researchers in Zurich have carved a 3D map of the world that’s 22 micrometers east to west by 11 micrometers north to south (a millimeter is 1000 micrometers wide):
They used a silicon needle with a tip about ten thousand times smaller than an ant to sculpt a polymer material known as polyphthalaldehyde. By heating the needle to between 300 and 500 degrees centigrade, they were able to melt and evaporate tiny segments of the material without disturbing those particles’ neighbors.
While that piezoelectric trick isn’t new, the researchers’ breakthrough was their choice of material. The polymer polyphthalaldehyde IBM used was designed to “unzip” its chemical bonds when exposed to heat, to allow for clean removal of the material in patterns.
The silicon needle technique isn’t just a novelty. IBM’s researchers hope that it could someday be used to craft circuit boards at smaller sizes than e-beam lithography is used to etch them today, or even build tiny nanobots or other tiny mechanical structures that could travel inside the human body or other nanoscale environments. “We’re not just here to carve models of mountains,” says Duerig. “We have technology that can actually do things on a time scale and a precision scale which is commercially interesting.”
[ geekosystem | forbes | more pics here ]
