This is one of the tiniest pieces of art ever made – an image of the sun made from 20,000 microscopic particles of gold.
The recreation of Robert Fludd’s 17th century drawing of the Sun – the alchemists’ symbol for gold – is shown being created by precisely placing 20,000 gold particles, each about 60 nanometers in diameter, etched on a silicon chip “wafer”.(60 nanometers is 60 billionths of a meter; a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide.)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpDn2qOHl8U]
This is not only a piece of art but it is also micro-engineering. It is nanotechnology racing ahead. This creation means 2 things:-1st this is a new nano “printing” technique and 2nd the scientists believe this will lead to breakthroughs in ultra-miniature; ultra-tiny chips, lenses, and biosensors.
IBM researchers in collaboration with scientists from the ETH Zurich have achieved this breakthrough.
The achievement, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, offers a promising and powerful new tool for use in a wide range of fields and industries such as biomedicine, electronics and IT .
