| Posted: Aug 10, 2016 | |
How small is nanotechnology? (w/video)(Nanowerk News) In this video illustrating the small scale of nanotechnology, the letters that spell Molecular Foundry were written with a beam of electrons fired at the surface. The smallest feature is 20 nanometers, or roughly 100 atoms. |
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| As the video zooms out, you lose sight of Molecular Foundry and see the Berkeley Lab logo, which was written with a beam of charged gallium atoms. | |
| As you continue to zoom out, you see an 18 hour timelapse of Abraham Lincoln’s face, again written with gallium atoms. | |
| Finally, all of this is done within the Lincoln Memorial side of the penny as it is removed from the focused ion beam. | |
| Photolithography, which literally means writing with light, is the foundation for most top-down fabrication of things like microprocessors. | |
| However, because of something called the diffraction limit, photolithography is limited to devices that have features no smaller than the wavelength of the light used, often in the 100s of nanometers. | |
| As a result, things smaller than light like atoms and electrons must be used. |
| Source: Berkeley Lab | |
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