NatGeo has teamed up with scientists from IBM to create the world's smallest magazine cover. This cover, featuring a pair of pandas, measures just 0.00043 wide by 0.00055 inches high. At this size, 2,000 of the sheets would barely cover a single grain of salt.
The picture created on an extremely small piece of polymer was featured on the cover of the March 2014 issue of National Geographic Kids, with the banner "Panda Twins!"
IBM Research, a laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland recently developed a new method of etching polymers. This technique uses a heated probe made of silicon to create a three-dimensional etching in the sheets. During development, researchers found that evaporated material would stick to nearby surfaces. They adapted the chemistry of the polymer to minimize this issue.
The microscopic chisel is "100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil point. Using this nano-sized tip, which creates patterns and structures on a microscopic scale, it took scientists just 10 minutes to etch the magazine cover onto a polymer, the same substance of which plastics are made," IBM Research stated in commentary on a video announcing the creation of the tiny cover.
Urs Duerig, one of the researchers involved in the creation of the tiny sheet said the new etching technology created much less debris than lithographic methods. Although initial processes were prohibitively slow, advances in 2011 increased production speeds by 1,000 times.
"It's like a 3D printer on a microscopic scale - you can make any structure you want but a million times smaller with this machine," Felix Holzner, chief executive of SwissLitho, a licensee of the technology, told the press.
This is the ninth time National Geographic Kids has created the world's smallest magazine cover.
The small-scale printers cost more than $690,000, and are primarily designed for use by universities and research facilities.
"The intention of SwissLitho is to make it much easier for researchers to enter the large and hardly explored research fields which open up with heatable and well controllable nano-scale tips," SwissLitho officials explained on the company Web site.
Development of these technologies may be able to trigger chemical reactions, create sheets which selectively adhere to amino acids and more. By applying other chemicals to the tip of the tiny chisel, it could be possible to precisely deposit the material on the polymer sheets. Small thermal "hot spots" on electronics could be mapped in great detail. By "poking" material, these heated tips can test for the exact composition of a test sample.
