"Micro Tulip" by Akshay Kumar Mahadev Arabhavi, ETH Zurich
Entry in category 1. Object of study; Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND: Akshay Kumar Mahadev Arabhavi
This is a scanning electron microscope image of a gold structure resting on a pillar made of a semiconductor. Note that the pillar is less than 200 nanometers thick (100 nm is one-tenth of a micron). To put this in perspective, the thickness of a human hair is approximately 80 microns. This structure was found on one of my chips while fabricating high speed transistors. Though this was an unexpected result in my experiment, it sure brought a smile on me because it looked very interesting and pretty. What does it look like? Well, that is up to the viewers’ imagination. To me it looks like a tulip or Groot.
The image was taken using a Zeiss scanning electron microscope at FIRST-lab, ETHZ. It is important to mention that the image from an electron microscope is always grayscale as there is no light involved in the imaging.
"Micro Tulip" by Akshay Kumar Mahadev Arabhavi, ETH Zurich
Entry in category 1. Object of study; Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND: Akshay Kumar Mahadev Arabhavi
This is a scanning electron microscope image of a gold structure resting on a pillar made of a semiconductor. Note that the pillar is less than 200 nanometers thick (100 nm is one-tenth of a micron). To put this in perspective, the thickness of a human hair is approximately 80 microns. This structure was found on one of my chips while fabricating high speed transistors. Though this was an unexpected result in my experiment, it sure brought a smile on me because it looked very interesting and pretty. What does it look like? Well, that is up to the viewers’ imagination. To me it looks like a tulip or Groot.
The image was taken using a Zeiss scanning electron microscope at FIRST-lab, ETHZ. It is important to mention that the image from an electron microscope is always grayscale as there is no light involved in the imaging.