Wednesday, 27th September 2006 (4337 views)

Researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois have created a new array with which they can create tiny patterns on gold or glass substrates.

They have managed to use the 55,000-pen, two-dimensional device to create 55,000 identical copies of a 2005 US nickel, showing an image of Thomas Jefferson, using molecular ink. Each image is only one molecule tall.

The process took just 30 minutes and each image is 12 micrometres wide and made up of 8,773 dots. The method used is known as Dip-Pen Nanolithography (DPN) and could have many potential uses.

"This development should lead to massively miniaturised gene chips, combinatorial libraries for screening pharmaceutically active materials and new ways of fabricating and integrating nanoscale or even molecular-scale components for electronics and computers," said research leader Chad A Mirkin.

"In addition, it could lead to new ways of studying biological systems at the single particle level, which is important for understanding how cancer cells and viruses work and for getting them to stop what they do."

 

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