World's smallest magazine cover created
28 April 2014 9:17 PM GMT (Update:2019-04-01 11:22:13)
IBM scientists have created the world's smallest magazine cover, which is invisible to the naked eye
The magazine cover used by the IBM team
Washington: IBM scientists have created the world's smallest magazine cover, which is invisible to the naked eye, and it is so tiny that 2,000 could fit on a grain of salt.
Researchers at International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) in US developed a new tool inspired by hieroglyphics, the written language created by the ancient Egyptians.
The core of the technology is a tiny, heatable silicon tip with a sharp apex - 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil. Working like a 3D printer it 'chisels' away material by local evaporation.
To demonstrate the tool, IBM partnered with National Geographic Kids magazine to 'chisel' the world's smallest magazine cover. 
The recently certified Guinness World Records cover is 11 x 14 micrometres and was unveiled at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC.
"With our novel technique we can achieve very a high resolution at 10 nanometres at greatly reduced cost and complexity," said Dr Armin Knoll, a physicist at IBM Research.
"In particular by controlling the amount of material evaporated, we can also produce 3D relief patterns at the unprecedented accuracy of merely one nanometre in a vertical direction.
"Now it's up to the imagination of scientists and engineers to apply this technique to real-world challenges," Knoll said in a statement.
IBM has licensed the "chiselling" technology to a start-up based in Switzerland called SwissLitho which is bringing the technology to market under the name NanoFrazor.
Several weeks ago the firm shipped its first NanoFrazor to McGill University's Nanotools Microfab in Canada where scientists and students will use the tool's unique fabrication capabilities to experiment with ideas for designing novel nano-devices.
To celebrate the tool's arrival the university created a nano-sized map of Canada measuring 30 micrometres or 0.030 millimetres in length.
( Source : PTI )
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