Can be used to prototype a new generation of technologies, from energy-efficient transistors to nano-sized security tags to prevent document forgery

WASHINGTON, April 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ National Geographic Kids today claimed its ninth GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for the Smallest Magazine Cover, using patented technology from IBM (NYSE: IBM), at the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C.

Flickr Photos: https://www.flickr.com/gp/ibm_research_zurich/dY33Lo/ YouTube: http://youtu.be/ucGbmsg5FvA

To create the record-setting cover, IBM scientists invented a tiny chisel with a heatable silicon tip 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil point. Using this nano-sized tip, which creates patterns and structures on a microscopic scale, it took scientists just 10 minutes and 40 seconds to etch the magazine cover onto a polymer, the same substance of which plastics are made. The resulting magazine cover measures 11 14 micrometers, which is so small that 2,000 could fit on a grain of salt.

To select which cover to shrink, National Geographic Kids turned to its readers to vote online for their favorite design. The March 2014 cover that earned the most votes as well as a microscopic version, visible through a ZEISS Axio Imager 2 microscope, was unveiled at the USA Science & Engineering Festival. It will be on display at the National Geographic Kids and IBM booth #3728 on April 26 and 27.

National Geographic Kids magazine subscribers loved this cover, so it makes sense that a broader audience would vote it as their favorite of 2014 as well. And by helping to set this Guinness World Records title, theyre learning about science while having fun, which is what Kids is all about, said Rachel Buchholz, vice president and editor of National Geographic Kids.

National Geographic Kids eight previous GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS titles are: Longest Line of Footprints (10,932 prints measuring two miles, set in 2004); Largest Collection of Plush Toys (2,304 stuffed animals, set in 2006); Longest Chain of Shoes (10,512 shoes, set in 2008); Most Items of Clothing Collected for Recycling (33,088 items of denim clothing, set in 2009); Most People Doing Jumping Jacks in 24 Hours (300,265, set in 2011), Largest Collection of Shoes to Recycle (16,407, set in 2013); Most People Running 100 Meters in 24 hours (30,914, set in 2013); and Largest Online Photo Album (104,022 pictures, set in 2013).

How IBM researchers created the cover

The nanometer-sized tip, which can be heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit), is attached to a bendable cantilever that controllably scans the surface of the substrate material, in this case a polymer invented by chemists at IBM Research in Almaden, California, with the accuracy of one nanometerone millionth of a millimeter. By applying heat and force, the tip can remove substrate material based on predefined patterns, thus operating like a nanomilling machine or a 3D printer with ultrahigh precision. Additional material can be removed to create complex 3D structures with nanometer precision by modulating the force or by readdressing individual spots.

This new capability may impact the prototyping of new transistor devices, including tunneling field effect transistors, for more energy-efficient and faster electronics for anything from cloud data centers to smartphones. By the end of the year IBM hopes to begin exploring the use of this technology to prototype transistor designs made of graphene like materials.

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GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS Title for the World's Smallest Magazine Cover Made with a Microscopic 3D Printer