THE world鈥檚 smallest guitar is about the size of a human blood cell, with
a width of around one-twentieth of the thickness of a human hair.
Dustin Carr and Harold Craighead of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York,
sculpted the 鈥渘anoguitar鈥� from a layer of crystalline silicon on an oxide
substrate using a beam of electrons. They then chemically etched away some of
the oxide to leave six free-standing guitar strings, each about 100 atoms
thick.
You could strum the nanoguitar with the tip of an atomic force microscope,
but it would twang very softly鈥攁nd at frequencies inaudible to the human
ear. 鈥淲e are just interested in seeing how far we can push the technology,鈥� says
Carr, who hopes to develop tiny mechanical devices for electronic and fibreoptic
systems.
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