IBM and National Geographic Kids unveil the "World's Smallest Magazine Cover"

National Geographic Kids today claimed its ninth GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® title for the Smallest Magazine Cover, using technology from IBM, at the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. To create the record-setting cover, IBM scientists invented a tiny "chisel" with a heatable silicon tip 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil point.<br /><br />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. The resulting magazine cover measures 11 × 14 micrometers, which is so small that 2,000 cover images could fit on a grain of salt.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ucGbmsg5FvA" width="560"></iframe>

IBM Research - Zurich NanoFrazor nanotechnology national geographic IBM and National Geographic Kids unveil the "World's Smallest Magazine Cover"

National Geographic Kids today claimed its ninth GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® title for the Smallest Magazine Cover, using technology from IBM, a...

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Help Set a Guinness World Records Title

<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">IBM scientists are partnering with National Geographic Kids to set a Guinness World Records title for the world's smallest magazine cover.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><span style="background-color: white;">You can participate by voting for your favorite </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">National Geographic Kids</span></span> cover <a href="http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/vote">here</a>.</span></span><br /><br /><b>How will we create the world's smallest magazine cover? </b></span></span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8177/7949924542_e1c881a120_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8177/7949924542_e1c881a120_n.jpg" width="176" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The SwissLitho NanoFrazor Probe</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">IBM scientists have invented a tiny chisel with a nano-size tip 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil point. Using this tip the scientists will etch the magazine cover onto sliver of polymer (plastic) called polyphthalaldehyde. If they are successful, the cover will be so small that 2,000 of them could fit on a grain of salt. <br /><br />The tip, similar to the kind used in atomic force microscopes, is attached to a bendable cantilever that controllably scans the surface of the substrate material with the accuracy of one nanometer—a millionth of a millimeter. By applying heat and force, the nano-sized tip can remove substrate material based on predefined patterns, thus operating like a “nanomilling” machine or 3D printer with ultra-high precision.<br /><br />Similar to using 3D printer, more material can be removed to create complex 3D structures with nanometer precision by modulating the force or by readdressing individual spots. <br /><br />Sound familiar? It should, IBM scientists <a href="http://www.zurich.ibm.com/news/10/nanopatterning.html">announced</a> this breakthrough innovation in 2010 in a series of papers published in the journals Science and Advanced Materials where they demonstrated the technique to create a map of the world. Check out the video below to see how they did it.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This new capability may impact the prototyping of new transistor devices, including tunneling field effect transistors, for more energy efficient and faster electronics for anything from cloud data center to smartphones.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">IBM scientists envision other applications as well in the emerging field of quantum systems. One way to address and connect such quantum systems is via electromagnetic radiation or light. The new technique may be used to create high quality patterns to control and manipulate light for this purpose at unprecedented precision.  </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The technology has been licensed by IBM to the Swiss start-up <a href="http://www.swisslitho.com/index.php/en/">SwissLitho</a> who brought the desktop-sized tool to market under the name NanoFrazor. <br /><br /><b>Click and Vote</b><br /><br /><a href="http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/vote">Voting is now open</a>.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span>Check back on the NG KIDS website on April 11 to find out which cover will be turned into the world's smallest magazine cover. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">After it's miniaturized, the tiny cover will be unveiled on April 25 at the <a href="http://www.usasciencefestival.org/">2014 USA Science and Engineering Festival</a> in Washington DC. If you plan to attend the event stop by the IBM and National Geographic Kids booth to meet the scientist who created the cover and to see it for yourself.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><object height="315" width="560"><param name="movie" value="//www.youtube.com/v/mZ9J0EYUlhg?hl=en_US&version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="//www.youtube.com/v/mZ9J0EYUlhg?hl=en_US&version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></object>

guinness world record IBM Research - Zurich NanoFrazor nanopatterning national geographic SwissLitho Help Set a Guinness World Records Title

IBM scientists are partnering with National Geographic Kids to set a Guinness World Records title for the world's smallest magazine cove...

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