Communications of the ACM
Making a Mini Mona Lisa
Researchers created a copy of the Mona Lisa on a substrate surface just 30 microns wide, using a technique that could be used to develop nanomanufacturing technologies.
Credit: Alamy
Georgia Tech researchers have painted a miniature copy of the Mona Lisa on a substrate surface approximately 30 microns in width, demonstrating a technique that could be used to develop nanomanufacturing technologies because the team was able to vary the surface concentration of molecules on short-length scales.
The image was created with an atomic force microscope using a process called ThermoChemical NanoLithography. The researchers positioned a heated cantilever at the substrate surface to create a series of confined nanoscale chemical reactions, and by varying the heat at each location, they were able to control the number of new molecules that were created.
"By tuning the temperature, our team manipulated chemical reactions to yield variations in the molecular concentrations on the nanoscale," says Georgia Tech professor Jennifer Curtis.
The researchers produced chemical gradients of amine groups, but they say the technique could be extended for use with other materials. "This technique should enable a wide range of previously inaccessible experiments and applications in fields as diverse as nanoelectronics, optoelectronics, and bioengineering," Curtis says.
From Georgia Tech News
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