The White House, and nanosize it

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March 30, 2004 — No one should accuse Cornell University of trying to win friends in the White House with large gifts.

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The Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility produced a nanofabricated etching on a silicon chip that includes six full-color U.S. flags and 15 images of the White House.

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The postage-stamp-size chip, placed in a paperweight, was scheduled to be presented to the White House today. Josh Wolfe, a Cornell alumnus and managing partner of the nanotech investment firm Lux Capital, will present it to White House science adviser John Marburger on behalf of President Bush.

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The gift was made to mark the passage in December of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, but it also shows off Cornell’s nanomanipulation muscle, according to Carl Batt, Cornell professor and co-director of the Nanobiotechnology Center. Research associates Scott Stelick and Madanagopal Kunnavakkam in Batt’s lab created the flags and White Houses.

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The six flags each measure 3 millimeters by 1.5 millimeters. When the chip is held at an angle, the colors are reflected by a pattern of lines etched into a thin layer of glass coating on a silicon wafer. The lines were spaced at nanometer dimensions to diffract specific wavelengths of light, which produces the red and white and blue.

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“The nano-American flag is an opportunity to show off what you can do to manipulate the physical properties of a material at the nanoscale,” Batt said in an e-mail. “It diffracts colors because of our ability to create structures with nanometer resolution and it is a fun image to capture the imagination.”

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Even with tiny trinkets, Cornell doesn’t play political favorites. In 2000, the university presented a nanosaxophone paperweight to then-President Clinton. Researchers created the image, a profile of the president playing the sax, by lining up nearly 300,000 nanoscale silhouettes of the sax. At the time, a Cornell official boasted it was “the smallest gift any president has ever received.”

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A microphoto of the chip design, with enlarged versions of the flag portion.

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