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 Scientists carved the 11x14-micrometre image of two pandas that
appeared on last month's cover of the National Geographic Kids
magazine onto a polymer using technology similar to 3D printing.
"My idea was to do something similar to chiseling a rock, but just
to do it on a nano-scale," said Urs Duerig, a scientist at IBM in
Switzerland and one of the inventors of the machine.
The device, roughly the size of a family refrigerator, used a tiny
chisel with a heatable silicon tip 100,000 times smaller than a
sharpened pencil point to cut out the image.
The technology could be used to make transistors, as well as
nano-sized security tags to prevent the forgery of money, passports
and artwork, scientists involved said.
"The application range is quite broad," said Felix Holzner, chief
executive of SwissLitho, a startup to which the IBM technology has
been licensed. "It's like a 3D printer on a microscopic scale — you
can make any structure you want but a million times smaller with
this machine."
At the moment, the high-tech machines, which cost around 500,000
euros ($691,500), are intended as research tools rather than for use
in the production industry, Holzner said.
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National Geographic Kids, which commissioned the project, will
unveil its Guinness world record title for the smallest magazine
cover in Washington, D.C. on Friday.
($1 = 0.7231 euros)
(Reporting by Alice Baghdjian; editing by Michael Roddy and
Catherine Evans)
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