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Nano Logo

leb writes "More useless but fun innovations in nanotech - University of Massachusetts physicist Mark Tuominen may have some trouble finding a T-shirt small enough for the UMass logo recently sketched in his lab. Tuominen and graduate student Mustafa Bal recently created a UMass logo which is roughly the size of a red blood cell - some six micrometers in diameter. Full story and images available from the UMass News office."

70 comments

  1. Suggestion Needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

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  2. Re:trolls brain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Try cutting the little finger off rubber glove - it should fit you perfectly.

    Pencildick.

  3. Nano by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i have a hot gowl full of nanogrits that i will pour down my nanopants. thank you.

  4. Re:Nail your colours to the mast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    a poster size print of nano art - is this irony ?

  5. first post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    RAISIN POWER

    1. Re:first post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      geez get a life. these "first post" -things are so annoying. what's the deal?

    2. Re:first post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Raisin brain

  6. Whitey on the moon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep, we`ve come a long way....

  7. Nanos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll class this with the infamous "Bill Sux" tag on the chip and the "Nano guitar" someone built some years ago. Are there any other useless products of a rather cool technology?

    1. Re:Nanos by nhowie · · Score: 1
      infamous "Bill Sux" tag on the chip

      Which, alas, proved to be a hoax :(

      Was the nano-guitar built for mini-elvis?
      --

  8. Fine pinrt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it just me or is this just a ploy to make the "fine print" ALOT easier to hide =) "Your credit card has %.01 intrest! (fine print: for the first 20 seconds, %52 intrest is acumulated after that.)

  9. Re:Investment Opportunities? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are already a lot of companies into the nano tech business. They're still in what I call 'economic limbo'. But surely as soon as the technology will have more practical uses and will be more cheaper, they'll explode.

    I remember reading in Sciam a couple of years ago about a company called (if memory serves) Nanotch Inc. Whatthey do is really amazing. It all started by heating platinum at extremely high temperatures until it evaporates. They it's cooled very slowly so that the single atoms will solidificate with a certain order. Changing the cooling speed allows them to control the finished product. They were able to produce materials such as ceramic and steel with about 100-1000 times the strenght of the traditional material. The atomic structure is so ordered that there are virtually no points of rupture. Also they showed different ceramic they made. They showed transparent ceramic, translucent ceramic and colored ceramic. All products started from the same raw ceramic. They altered some physics propreties.

    Although their nano technology is not the same as what people think when talking about nano technology (often they think about nano robots), I personally think that if thei're able to reduce the production costs, they'll have huge opportunities to earn a lot of money. Basicallly they will redefines materials as we know them now.

  10. They've got a point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    From experience, I would say thay Linux and Solaris are both twice as easy to write network code for as are Windows, so they'd certainly be MY first choice for an OS to implement a DDoS client!

    Personally, I'd like to see more technical details on exactly what kind of DoS this is before I start pointing fingers at specific OSes. Any experience out there with what kind of hosts are most useful as Smurf packet amplifiers?

  11. Re:heh. Logo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    RT 1
    FD 10000

  12. is this new? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    sorry, but people have been doing e-beam litography for years (at least 5) now making structures down to 20 nm.
    and if i remember correctly there was a Philips logo CREATED (not just scanned) by an AFM or STM type thing. that was way smaller than this.

    rather unscientific marketing hype imho

  13. Re:trolls brain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I would be happy if they made a condom that fits my dick

  14. Pshaw.. big deal. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IBM has spelled its logo out at the atomic level using tunneling electron microscope, on a wafer of silicon. A blood-cell sized logo is no big deal. Come on! typical slashdot crap.

  15. Re:IBM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes around 1990, or so, IBM created an IBM logo several atoms high, using nickel atoms and a tungsten needle to drag the atoms into place. The logo lasted a couple of hours in a chilled enviroment. IMHO, this was way cool. Additionally, if I recall correctly, around the same time IBM had also managed to map a total visual representation of an atom - not an assumption based on theory, but an image conversion. Analgous to the method used by astronamers using radio telecscopes to depict distant objects.

  16. Re:Woopee do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Exactly, what's the big deal, people in UMass have too much time on their hands. Cornell made a tiny guitar 2 years ago about the same size. Instead of wasting time and money for these publicity stunts. They should do something useful with their fab labs.

  17. Re:Woopee do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So what? even if it's 0.05 um across. It's not an electrical circuit, just a logo. So since it didn't have to do anything, they could just make it look cute. If they made 0.05 um CMOS technology, I would be impressed, but not over this. And read the page, it wasn't on silicon, but on some polymer, so they were only limited by the resolution of their laser.

  18. AFM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check out www.di.com for some cool pix in this area. Specifically, the NanoTheater.

  19. Re:Creative urges? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Could be worse; rember the serial number on the snake scales in Bladerunner? The results of nanotechnology could be copyright and trademark stamps on, well, everything, no matter how small.

    And the fine print on an end-user license might end up being really really really fine...

  20. Ouch.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I bet these lego are absolutely impossible to snap apart from each other :P

    (As compared to relativley impossible with other lego.. my fingers still hurt from trying to take 1x1 bricks off large flat lego pieces..)

    1. Re:Ouch.. by anotherone · · Score: 1

      not lego, logo.

      Make Seven

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  21. Re:Waitaminnit! This is Hemos territory! by Emmett+Plant · · Score: 1
    Jeff, did emmett scoop you? Sorry for the apparent troll attempt, but I usually appreciate the perspective that hemos puts forth when it comes to nanotech stories. IMO, it would be pretty cool if /. editors stuck to their specialties.

    Hey, who would have thought that two people could possibly think the same thing was interesting? I'm interested in nanotech, too. That's why I posted the story.

    Emmett Plant

    --
    Also, check out #slashdot on irc.openprojects.net
  22. Waitaminnit! This is Hemos territory! by caferace · · Score: 1
    Jeff, did emmett scoop you? Sorry for the apparent troll attempt, but I usually appreciate the perspective that hemos puts forth when it comes to nanotech stories. IMO, it would be pretty cool if /. editors stuck to their specialties.

    General Disclaimer: I know that this was submitted by a /. reader/participant, but I'm still not convinced that "emmett" is not an editorial 'bot and wanted to I give hemos a fair shot at one of his favorite subjects...

  23. Re:heh. Logo by BluBrick · · Score: 1

    Actually, both these thoughts ran through my mind until I read the blurb. And I was still mistaken when I hit the link for the pics. I thought I was going to see the coat of arms of UMass.



    Achieving that level of detail in 6um would have been really impressive!



    --
    Ahh - My eye!
    The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
  24. Alumni by Byteme · · Score: 1

    For those of you that do not know: UMASS has the #1 ranked Polymer Science department in the nation. I was a Microbiology grad from there. James F. Bickford Sys Dev Assistant Electronic Interface Support

  25. Nanoo? by vr · · Score: 1

    nanoo, nanoo!

  26. Nail your colours to the mast by Bart · · Score: 1

    Since I first saw it I have been impressed by the picture of IBM written in Xenon atoms on Nickel.
    Now, as the era of nanotechnology gets nearer and nearer, I would like to have a poster sized copy of this for my wall. Anyone know where I can get this (or any other STM pictures or photomicrographs)

  27. Investment Opportunities? by Bart · · Score: 1

    Anyone have any pointers to good companies to invest in to get in at the start of this technology?
    The prime ones would seem to be the likes of IBM, Motorola, biotech companies like Genentech and Celera, but who else? Unfortunately Zyvex are not a publicly traded company.

  28. Re:Microscopic Tux? by Bartmoss · · Score: 1

    How would you know you didn't lose it? ;-)

  29. Microscopic Tux? by Bartmoss · · Score: 1

    So how long until think geek will carry nano logos of tux on a necklace?

    1. Re:Microscopic Tux? by hikari · · Score: 1

      Hey, I *would* wear it...



      --Hikari

      --

      --Hikari
      "Long distance information/ Disconnect me if you can/ On Detonation Boulevard..."
  30. Hmph. by Grit · · Score: 1

    Who cares about logos? I want some nano LEGOS!

  31. I want one! by delysid-x · · Score: 1

    Ok, so how long til I can write my own tiny little logos with a $250 printer?

  32. Mark Tuominen is quite a guy. by matthewsim · · Score: 1

    It's great to see Mark Tuominen getting such good press. I had a class with him as an undergraduate and I worked in his lab for a summer. His Mesoscopic Physics lab is a great place. There is always a good group of graduate and undergraduate students working on interesting projects. The thing that makes him stand out from some other researchers, though, is the attention he gives his undergraduates. The synergy between these different areas (undergraduate, graduate, and research) is a great example of how education at a University is supposed to work.

  33. Nano Lego! Whoa! - oh, wait by skip277 · · Score: 1

    Damn, misread the headline. And here I was thinking, "Great, now I too can get in on this nano-technology and build cool stuff!" Oh, well.

    Skippy

    --
    "False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent." - The Stainless Steel Rat
  34. Not the smallest ever by mhm23x3 · · Score: 1
    About 5 years ago IBM used a Tunnelling Electron Microscope to create their logo using Xenon atoms:

    http://www.englib.cornell.edu/SciTech/s95/atom.h tml

    --

    No sig.

  35. Quantum corrals- great teaching tool. by edremy · · Score: 1

    IBM has done some really neat molecule size atomic artwork. They figured out how to move atoms with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) and then arranged them on a substrate to write the IBM logo, among other things.

    Forget the IBM logo, that's just art. Look instead at the quantum corrals. I'm teaching quantum mechanics this semester and used two of the images since they are perfect examples of a 2-D particle in a box, one of the simplest QM systems you can solve analytically. The second of the images is so good you can even tell the quantum state of the electron. (nx = 3, n5 = 5)

    Eric

    --
    "Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
  36. Re:Woopee do by Nafta · · Score: 1

    6 microns across eh? What about 0.18 micron

    Look at the resolution, easily 30 to 100 across.

    That would make it about 0.06 to 0.18 microns per dot

  37. Applications for lawyers... by MosesJones · · Score: 1

    Brings a whole new meaning to the term "small print"

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  38. One step close to Blade Runner!!! by Markee · · Score: 1
    Hey, remember that scene in Blade Runner when Deckard has the piece of snake skin examined, and the expert detects a nano logo on it?
    I always hated this scene becaue I thought is was a silly idea. Now reality has caught up with it.
    Like in the movie, artists, painters etc. can pour a bag of nano logo particles into their paint to mark their work. Print the lot number onto them and dump them into the chocolate bar you are producing, so that you can trace back even the slightest amount of it back to its origin. Mix nanologo particles into a car's paint so that the serial number is everywhere on the car, not just imprinted into the engine block. Mass produced nano logo particles could be used to make dollar bills, ID cards etc. harder to falsify. I'm sure there hundreds of ideas more what you can do with it, besides making integrated circuits.

    --
    Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?
  39. How to be good at nano tech by zero-one · · Score: 1

    Does this mean that to be good at nano tech the organization you work for needs to have a very simple (or maybe a very complex) logo. Just think of all those great scientist who work for companies with photographs or similar for logos - looks like they will have to wait a while for the right technology to come along.

  40. Misread the headline [OT] by WhyteRabbyt · · Score: 1

    Thought it said 'Nano Lego'. Now -that- would be cool :)

    --
    free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
  41. Regarding IBM logo... by quasipunk+guy · · Score: 1

    RTFA, This is completely different.

    The IBM logo was done by pushing the atoms around. This is more `automatic' and suited for mass production. Sure, it isn't the smallest ever, but this is another step towards functional nanotech.

    -jay

  42. How close to usefulness are we? by ecampbel · · Score: 1

    The now-empty channels show up as orange areas on a yellow background. The UMass researchers have successfully filled the holes with metal, a major step toward creating usable electronic devices.

    Maybe someone can explain this to me, but the fact that they can fill a very inexact mold with medal really doesn't show me that they are close to producing electronic devices. The individual partitions of the mold seem to be of a fixed shape, so the ability to cast exact electronic parts seems to be very limited. Could someone please tell me how far away useful nano-technology is? How far away are we from being able to duplicate the power and functionality of a cell? When will we have the most hyped use of this new class of devices, nano-sized robots that can do custom drug delivery? It doesn't sound like we are even close

    --

    Sig goes here
  43. It's the polymer by Bakerman · · Score: 1

    It is not the size of the logo that's impressive here, it's the resolution. The polymer they used is the key factor behind this - if the grains of the material that they expose to e-beam lithography are small enough then the resolution will be high.

    The polymer they talk about seems to have long chains standing out from the surface, each forming a very small dot that can be exposed. Pretty neat.

    -Erik Aderstedt

    1. Re:It's the polymer by braind3ad · · Score: 1

      ... well I guess that's exactly the point. The news release(who said that news offices are really something good?) focuses completely on the wrong part of the story. Creating structures on micron scales is rather boring - and you wouldn't need those fancy block-co-polymers for that anyway.

      What's more interesting is the creation of a ordered structure on a nanometer scale (which is a bit a pain in the neck as those blocks usually align parallel to the surface of the film (due to a preferential interaction of the block components and the surfaces...) - but Tom and his guys managed to get them change their minds ;-) (amazing how motivating E fields can be...) and stand vertically - it's quite amazing to see those well ordered nano-structured surfaces (http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/photos/breaking%2 0news/UMlogodetail1-300.jpg).

      As none of the block components is really conductive... you need to take out the ones which formed the cylinders (keep the rest) and fill the holes with a metal... sounds easy, eh? It isn't.... The last time I tried to fill a hole of 20 nm diameter with a metal I just buried the hole under a nice layer of metal :( .... (wrong story I guess). Anyway... what you end up with is an array of wires (I think Mark & Tom already managed a length of a few microns) and a diameter of a few nanomters.... I think that's cool....

      ... what's nice about it is, that unlike those pretty images some people had been speaking about (HAL, right?) where the atoms had to be moved 1 by 1... this technique allows the generation of thousands of rather well controlled nano wires, just by self assembly of a polymer.... I'd think that's already quite a step to an application.

      .... anywayz... written already 2 much again oo

  44. It is... sort of by spiralx · · Score: 1

    While I totally agree this isn't really worthy of the tag "nano" it does have some similarities with what Drexler's vision is. The logo was made from custom-made polymers which had certain properties which allowed them to self-assemble into the required shape. I think that's why this is being pushed as nano, but maybe I'm just reading more into this than whoever wrote the article. Probably - "hey it's small, it must be nano!"

  45. Creative urges? by spiralx · · Score: 1

    Is the first thing anyone ever does with this sort of fancy new technology is to create a fancy little logo? I mean, you'd almost think they were actually frustrated artists :) This must have taken far longer to do than just a simple pattern or whatever. Maybe the extra grant money from the US government means we'll be seeing a whole load more minature pictures...

    1. Re:Creative urges? by Bearpaw · · Score: 2
      Maybe the extra grant money from the US government means we'll be seeing a whole load more minature pictures...

      The proposed additional US funding for nanotech research is probably why we're seeing this picture. It's probably grant posturing, just like the press release from Sandia Labs a couple of weeks ago. I've seen a couple of other releases like like this, too. (Including a really pathetic effort out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute that intentionally or unintentionally confused MEMS with nanotechnology.)

  46. IBM by Anonymous+Sniper · · Score: 1

    Didnt IBM commit the first act of atomic vandalism? Years ago i say a story on this, with B&W images of an IBM name appearing as peaks on a stark background... Ahh well. Let UMass have its glory, but Big Blue did it first. "One day the world will need only five atoms, and only the worlds richest five atoms will be able to afford them".

    1. Re:IBM by dbateman · · Score: 1

      Yup, that was them. Two of their researchers won the Nobel prize for the invention of the Scanning Tunnel Microsope, which also allowed individual atoms to be moved about. They then had the bad taste to use their invention to write the name "IBM" in what looked like ancient dot matrix print, but which was in fact individual atoms. If I remember correctly it was 6 atoms high. This sure beat 6 microns!

  47. Re:Creative urges? - uses of this technology by commanderfoxtrot · · Score: 1

    I seem to recall a couple of years ago in New Scientist that IBM (or some such company) had successfully created a nano-engine. The point was that the scientists had decided to use steam power because it was more efficient at such small sizes.

    They used a tiny spot of water, which was heated and then this produced work (perhaps pushing a piston?). Has any more information been published?

    As for practical uses of this, I think that real-life applications of any nano-technology are many years off!

    foxtrot

    --
    http://blog.grcm.net/
  48. Yawn by istartedi · · Score: 1

    Didn't IBM write their logo out in dot-matrix, where the dots were atoms? I think that was five years ago too. Unfortunately, I don't have the link. It wasn't very exciting then either.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  49. Misread the Tepic by luckykaa · · Score: 1

    Theught it was abeut minituarised Lego.

    New, that weuld be kewl;)

  50. Woopee do by jeff_bond · · Score: 1

    6 microns across eh? What about 0.18 micron (and upcoming 0.12u) wafer fab technology? What's the big deal?

    --
    stty erase ^H
  51. IBM logo 6 atoms high in 1989 with an STM. by dbateman · · Score: 1
    The IBM logo was first written with a Scanning Tunnel Microscope a few atoms high in 1989. The case that everyone here is mentioning 5 years ago was the first time they wrote the IBM logo at room temperature with an STM. Prior to that the jitter due to thermal effects caused the atoms in the logo to be misplaced, so the samples had to be cooled done to -270c (liquid nitrogen). You can check the IBM press release here.

    I also just looked up that Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Karl Binnig won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986 for the invention of the STM. They were working for the IBM research labs in germany at the time.

  52. It's annoying. by umasscsguy · · Score: 1

    Is it just me or does it bug anyone else that they wrote that it was "6 micrometers". 6 micrometers all lined up next to each other would be pretty big...6 microns would not.

  53. Re:heh. Logo by Yarn · · Score: 2

    Yeh, thats the 1st thing I thought. It would be an excellent idea, make a nanotech turtle.

    Or maybe one that could understand postscript would be neater...

    --
    -Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
  54. Re:heh. Logo by QZS4 · · Score: 2

    No, I saw the words "Nano Logo", and thought that Hemos wanted a new logo for the nanotech postings. I was almost aiming for the Gimp until I read the rest of the letters in the story... And it wasn't even posted by Hemos.

  55. Make paperweights.... by ch-chuck · · Score: 2

    no seriously, I'd manufacture one nano-logo and embed it in say a 3" cube of clear plastic, maybe visible with a certain power microscope - and sell 'em in bookstores maybe with a little booklet about nano-tech - hey, if people bought pet rocks and chunks of the Berlin Wall....

    Major Major Major Major

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
  56. IBM is cooler by FigWig · · Score: 2

    IBM has done some really neat molecule size atomic artwork. They figured out how to move atoms with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) and then arranged them on a substrate to write the IBM logo, among other things.

    You can check some out here. There are also tons of other pictures there with some short explanations. Definitely worth a browse.

    --
    Scuttlemonkey is a troll
  57. Not very "nano", mind you by Kaufmann · · Score: 2

    Blah. Am I the only one who thinks at this very moment K. Eric Drexler is coming down from Cambridge to kick the asses of the whinies from UMass who are misusing his pet phrase, "nano"? This doesn't seem particularly useful or innovative. Especially considering that there already exists 0.11 micron etching technology, by traditional means. Now, the day I hear about an UMass logo 0.11 microns across, then I'll be impressed.

    --
    To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
  58. Re:nano technology by gorilla · · Score: 2

    You already can. Microfiche already has the capacity to do that, and that's nowhere near the highest density available.

  59. Re:heh. Logo by kaphka · · Score: 2

    How about a bunch of nano-turtles pushing bits around on a chip (literally), following LOGO microcode, emulating an 8088? That'd be a kick.

    Sorry, I get a kick out of perverse forms of computation like that... Someday I'm going to build a web server that runs on marbles...

    --

    MSK

  60. nano technology by orangesquid · · Score: 2

    Now what would be neat is if I could get the entire last year's slashdot headlines in the palm of my hand... with all comments ;-)

    --
    --TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
  61. trolls brain by sparkes · · Score: 2

    Now scientists are working on a life size picture of the average /.'er troll brain.

    This work should take about five years to finish due to the average being dragged down over the last few days.

    sparkes


    *** www.linuxuk.co.uk relaunches 1 Mar 2000 ***

  62. heh. Logo by dieman · · Score: 3

    Heck, did anyone else see Nano Logo and think--

    WHAT!?! They got a LOGO intrepreter to interact with a nanotech device?!?! :)

    Could you imagine the little bugger thinge booping around to some logo commands? Whoops, did I just put that one up your nose?

    --
    -- dieman - Scott Dier