New nanotechnique set to benefit electronics industry
1 min read
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, arguably the world's most famous painting, has now been created on the world's smallest canvas by a team from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The researchers 'painted' the iconic image on a substrate surface approximately 30µm wide using a technique that looks set to benefit a host of industries, including nanoelectronics and optoelectronics.
The 'Mini Lisa' was created with an atomic force microscope and a process called ThermoChemical NanoLithography (TCNL). Going pixel by pixel, the Georgia Tech team positioned a heated cantilever at the substrate surface to create a series of confined nanoscale chemical reactions.
By varying only the heat at each location, the researchers were able to control the number of new molecules created; the greater the heat, the greater the local concentration.
More heat produced the lighter shades of grey, as seen on the Mini Lisa's forehead and hands. Less heat produced the darker shades in her dress and hair seen when the molecular canvas is visualised using fluorescent dye. Each pixel is spaced by 125nm.
"We envision TCNL will be capable of patterning gradients of other physical or chemical properties, such as conductivity of graphene," said Jennifer Curtis, who led the research. "This technique should enable a wide range of previously inaccessible experiments and applications in fields as diverse as nanoelectronics, optoelectronics and bioengineering."
