World's smallest 'snowman' measures 1/5th the width of a human hair

Utilizing laboratory tools designed for manipulating nano-particles, a scientist at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in West London has created a miniature snowman that measures just 0.01 mm across, or about 1/5th the width of a human hair.

The snowman was made from two tin beads normally used to calibrate electron microscopes. Platinum was used to weld the beads together, and a focused ion beam was used to mill the eyes and smile. The nose, just under 1 µm wide (or 0.001 mm), is platinum deposited by an ion beam.

The hand-made snowman was mounted on a silicon cantilever from an atomic force microscope whose sharp tip 'feels' surfaces creating topographic surveys at almost atomic scales.

In addition to the Atomic Force Microscope cantilevers, to create the nano-snowman required a SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices) magnetometer--a device that measures extremely small magnetic fields and has applications in spintronics, single particle detection, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), and quantum information processing. Also used were quantum hall probes that measure magnetic properties. You can learn more about all three techniques on NPL's site.

Dr. David Cox, a member of the Quantum Detection group at the laboratory, created the snowman, took the picture above, and posted this video with a holiday message: