10 nm ion beam + carbon gas = Nano Wine Glass

from the not-much-of-a-party dept.
A reader brings to our attention this piece from The Register: " NEC boffins have built a wine glass 200,000 times smaller than normal…Researchers built the glass from carbon with an external diameter of 2750nm, approximately 200,000 times smaller than a normal-sized glass. NEC hopes the success of the new technique will open the way for the production of ultra-miniature devices such as biosensors, high-performance optical communications devices, and control switches. The technology could also have applications in the fields of nano-electromechanics, nano-optics, nano-magnetic devices, bio-nanochips and sensors, says the company…The newly developed technique used to construct the wine glass is based on the use of a gallium-focused ion beam with a diameter of 10nm and a computer controlled electro-magnetic deflection system capable of building the target object in realtime in a gas containing the base material. The combination of the focused gallium ion beam and construction from the base material in gaseous form, controlled by a 3D CAD system, permits an accuracy better than (below) 100nm."