Our previous reporting on small-scale school spirit focused on using lithium-beam lithography to etch a school logo. Nanoweek.com reports on a team at Brigham Young University growing tiny BYU logos from carbon molecules.
Here is how BYU physics professor Robert Davis and his student Taylor Wood do it: They start by patterning the carbon seeds of the logo onto an iron plate. Next they send heated gas flowing across the surface, and a forest of carbon nano-tubes springs up.
“It’s a really fragile structure at this point – blowing on it or touching it would destroy it,” Davis said. “We developed a process to coat and strengthen the tubes so that we can make microstructures that have practical applications.”
Another student, Jun Song, used the process to make devices that quickly and neatly separate the various chemicals contained in a solution. The technique is detailed by the BYU physicists in a new study published in the scientific journal Advanced Functional Materials (“Carbon-Nanotube-Templated Microfabrication of Porous Silicon-Carbon Materials with Application to Chemical Separations”).
