Slashdot Mirror
Nano Scale Artworks
Matthew Sparkes writes "This article is a list of the best nano-scale artworks. It includes a 15 micron wide badger, a ten micron long guitar (which was actually played) and a 120 micron long New Scientist logo. Of course these are the images that got released to the press. In labs around the world people must have used their bleeding-edge technologies to make structures just to impress their friends. I wonder how many scientists' significant others have received nano-Valentines on Feb 14th?"
Back in my VLSI class at the Univ. of Saskatchewan in 1985, our chip design team put each of our initials into the chip (I think it was a simple 10-bit adder) and although it may have seemed easy, we had to add them in such a way as to pass the various layout tests that the fab plant forced on the file. So we couldn't just add a Metal layer with "TDz" on it, it had to be drawn in such a way that all the various layout rules such as minimum distance and certain layers not crossing in certain ways had to be followed.
TDz.
I wonder what the cost is to produce these once the initial template is made? I know that many microchips have been found to have microscopic (nanoscopic?) logos and/or designs etched in them. Many countries also include various watermarks etched to microweave in their currency.
How practical would it be to include an imprint that is only visible to microscope, and have a verification method that depends on checking said imprint (would have to be viewable with somewhat inexpensive microscopes).
In college, I made a metal1 layer of my initials "+" my girlfriend's initials in an unused area of a 2um process microchip through MOSIS (the letters were around 100um tall). You could see it in a microscope. She wasn't impressed.
New girlfriend was acquired shortly thereafter.