Season's greetings on a nano-scale

Researchers from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering have demonstrated the capabilities of their newly installed electron beam lithography system by producing a tiny Christmas card.

The card is made from metal alloy patterned on a silicon chip and is so tiny that about 280 million could be printed onto a single sheet of A6 paper or standard greetings card. The smallest part of the design is less than 16 billionths of a meter wide; that is only a few 10’s of atoms across.

The researchers hope to use this state of the art tool for building new types of nano-scale devices which will allow the development of ultra-high frequency electronics, novel magnetic memory technologies and biomedical-sensors. In turn, this benefits Leeds’ undergraduates by keeping them fully up-to-date with the latest emerging technologies.

The system is part of a regional facility which is shared between the Universities of Leeds, York and Sheffield. It was funded by EPSRC, and the University of Leeds, and can be accessed by academia and industry throughout the UK.