Researchers have made the smallest record ever, cutting 25 seconds of ‘Rocking Around the Christmas Tree’, on to a 40-micrometre diameter disc.
The team at DTU Physics used the Nanofrazor, a new nano-sculpting machine from Heidelberg Instruments, to cut the first part of the classic Christmas single.
Despite delivering the record-breaking Christmas record, the Nanofrazor wasn’t designed to create tiny vinyl. With its ability to engrave 3D patterns into surfaces with nanoscale resolution, researchers say it will allow them to create new nanostructures that may pave the way for novel technologies in fields such as quantum devices, magnetic sensors and electron optics.
Writing on the DTU website, Professor Peter Bøggild from DTU Physics, said: “I have done lithography for 30 years, and although we’ve had this machine for a while, it still feels like science fiction. We’ve done many experiments, like making a copy of the Mona Lisa in a 12 by 16-micrometre area with a pixel size of ten nanometers. We’ve also printed an image of DTU’s founder – Hans Christian Ørsted – in an 8 by 12-micrometre size with a pixel size of 2.540.000 DPI. To get an idea of the scale we are working at, we could write our signatures on a red blood cell with this thing.”
“The most radical thing is that we can create free-form 3D landscapes at that crazy resolution – this grey-scale nanolithography is a true game-changer for our research”.
[Via DTU]