Dec. 23 () –
At only 40 micrometers (0.04mm) in diameterresearchers at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Physics) have made the smallest Christmas disc ever cut.
The disc, which contains the first 25 seconds of the Christmas classic “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”, has been cut with a new nanosculpting machine, the Nanofrazor, recently purchased from Heidelberg Instruments.
The Nanofrazor can etch three-dimensional patterns on surfaces with nanometer resolution, allowing researchers to create new nanostructures that could pave the way for new technologies. in fields such as quantum devices, magnetic sensors, and electron optics.
“I’ve been doing lithography for 30 years, and even though we’ve had this machine for a while, it still feels like science fiction to me. We’ve done a lot of experiments, like making a copy of the Mona Lisa in an area of 12 by 16 micrometers with a pixel size of 10 nanometers,” says it’s a statement Professor Peter Boggild, from DTU Physics.
“The most radical thing is that we can create free-form three-dimensional landscapes with that crazy resolution: this grayscale nanolithography is a real game changer for our research.”
The Nanofrazor is not like a printer that adds material to a support, but works like a CNC (computer numerical control) machine that removes material at precise points, leaving the desired shape. In the case of the Mona Lisa and HC Orsted miniature paintings, the final image is defined by line-by-line removal of polymer until a perfect grayscale image emerges. For Peter Boggild, an amateur musician and vinyl record enthusiast, the idea of cutting a record at the nanoscale was a no-brainer.
“We decided we could also try printing a record. We took a snippet of ‘Rocking Around The Christmas Tree’ and cut it up like a normal record, but because we’re working at the nanoscale it can’t be played on a normal turntable.” The Nanofrazor went to work like a lathe to cut records, converting an audio signal into a spiral groove on the surface of the media. In this case, the medium is a polymer other than vinyl.
“We even encode the music in stereo: Side twists are the left channel, while Depth mod contains the right channel. It may be too impractical and expensive to become a hit record. To read the groove you need an atomic force microscope or the Nanofrazor, which are quite expensive, but it is certainly doable.”
“We work with 2D materials, and when these ultra-thin materials are carefully placed on top of 3D landscapes, they follow the contours of the surface. Simply put, they curve, and that’s a whole new and powerful way to ‘program’ materials to do things that no one would have thought possible just fifteen years ago.For example, when curved in the right way, graphene behaves as if there is a giant magnetic field when, in fact, there isn’t. And we can curve it the right way with the Nanofrazorsays Peter Boggild.
