Posted: January 23, 2011

The Silk Collective, moon rises, and other winning nanotechnology images

(Nanowerk News) Here is another installment of our collection of amazing images from nanotechnology labs from all over the world. You can find other nanotechnology images here.
During the 2010 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston, MA in December, the MRS conducted the tenth installment of the popular "Science as Art" competition (View winners from past competitions). Here are the six first-place and second-place winners:
The silk collective
The silk collective. Silk, produced by the silkworm Bombyx mori, has been viewed for millennia as a prestigious and valuable material. This protein has recently found application as a high technology material in biomedical micro- and nanotechnology. This scanning electron microscopy image depicts a detail of a micro patterned silk surface, fabricated with an all-aqueous micro molding technique. The silk structures, measuring approximately one micrometer in diameter, were fabricated at room temperature and under ambient pressure. The research is performed in Prof. Fiorenzo Omenetto's group (Ultrafast Nonlinear Optics and Biophotonics Laboratory) and is part of "the silk collective" at Tufts University. (Image: Konstantinos Tsioris, Tufts University)
 
Stem of nanoflowers
Stem of nanoflowers. SThis picture is created from a high resolution SEM image of zinc oxide "nanoflowers" synthesized by a physical vapor deposition technique. (Image: Abhishek Prasad, Michigan Technological University)
 
Surfacing Turtle - nano-image
Surfacing Turtle. Calcium carbonate crystals mineralized on a chitosan thin film. Image taken in a scanning electron microscope with the secondary electron detector at 6 kV. The sample was coated with Pt/Pd for 30 seconds. (Image: Philipp Hunger, Drexel University)
 
Rising Moon - nano-image
Rising Moon. Tin Ball on KOH-etched Si surface appears like the moon rising above Si pyramids. This image was obtained using a scanning electron microscope at 16,100x magnification and was colorized using Adobe Photoshop. (Image: Sedat Canli, Middle East Technical University)
 
Aurora Zinc Oxide
Aurora Zinc Oxide. This picture was created from the convergence of a high-resolution cross-sectional and a plan view SEM image of a zinc oxide "nanowall structure" synthesized by a metal-organic chemical vapor deposition technique. Color was added to the original image. (Image: Dong Chan Kim, Sungkyunkwan University)
 
Grassland Sunrise nano-image
Grassland Sunrise. High-resolution SEM image of germanium/silicon core/shell heterostructure nanowires (diameter ∼10 nm) synthesized by a two-step chemical vapor deposition method on a layered Si/SiO2 substrate. (Image: Yongjie Hu, Harvard University)
We have a collection of these amazing images in some of our articles on Nanowerk. You can find the links here.
Source: MRS