Smallest nano calligraphy

In March 2009, researchers Hari Manoharan and Christopher Moon, of Stanford University’s Physics Department and Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, were able to write letters so small that they are composed of subatomic pixels no bigger than 0.3 nanometres.

The team ‘wrote’ the letters “S” and “U” for Stanford University using a scanning tunnelling microscope to arrange individual carbon monoxide molecules on a copper surface in a complicated two-dimensional pattern. They then used a constant flow of electrons naturally present on the copper surface to form the letters. The electrons, rippling over the surface as waves, scattered off any carbon monoxide molecules they met and worked together to project holographic patterns of the letters. This application can be used to encode vast amounts of information and could be used to print the 32-volume Encyclopedia Britannica 2,000 times on the head of a drawing pin.