Today we have a nanotech nod to last week’s historic election for US President and an example of the artistic possibilities of nanotechnology, rather than news of scientific or technological advances. The New Scientist blog “Meet president Nanobama” links to a collection of 0.5 millimeter-wide line drawings of President-elect Obama, each made from about 150 million carbon nanotubes. Nanobama is part of John Hart‘s nanobliss “gallery of visualizations of small-scale structures of carbon nanotubes and silicon”. The drawings are very definitely not atomically precise. Photolithography is used to pattern nanoparticle catalysts on a glass slide, and then forests of carbon nanotubes grow where the catalysts are present.
—Jim
