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Bizarre/Beautiful
Micrograph Contest

“A good Micrograph is worth more than the MegaByte it consumes.”

Entries Presented by Dr. John Randall
The rules include the following:
• Entries have to be of a single image taken with a microscope and could not be significantly altered.
• There is no restriction with respect to the subject matter.
• Electron and ion micrographs have to be black and white.

In 2011, 86 entries were submitted. There were many outstanding micrographs. The work represented in the submitted micrographs covered a wide range of fields including micro mechanical, photonic, and integrated circuit fabrication, chemical and dry etching, carbon nanotube structures,  carbon nanotube growth experiments,  biological samples, material science experiments and, of course, e-beam, ion beam, and photo lithography experiments.

The panel of judges who selected the award winners were:

Don Tennant – Cornell
Ellyn Segal PhD – Biosafety Manager Stanford University
Prof. Waichi Pang – Hong Kong, Michigan, and the world
ShaChelle Devlin Manning – Manti Technologies, Partner

There were six awards:
Grand Prize
Most Bizzare
Best Photon Micrograph
Best Ion Micrograph
Best Electron Micrograph
Hardest to Explain Micrograph

There were 10 Honorable Mentions.

All 2011 Entries (with original titles)

Judges exercised their prerogative to liberally interpret the award categories, change the micrograph titles, and even rotate the micrograph if it pleased them.


BEST ELECTRON MICROGRAPH

Title: Nanotube Nebula

Description: SEM image of bundled carbon nanotubes with a thin coating of SiO.

Magnification (3″x4″ image): 25000X

Instrument (Make and Model): FEI Nova Nanolab 600

Submitted by: Matthew Bresin

Affiliation: College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, (SUNY Albany)


BEST ION MICROGRAPH

Title: Painted Desert

Description:Polycrystalline gold surface, imaged with a neon ion beam

Magnification (3″x4″ image):  38kX

Instrument: Carl Zeiss NTS, ORION Plus   

Submitted by: Larry Scipioni

Affiliation: Carl Zeiss NTS


BEST PHOTON MICROGRAPH

Title: Solar flares

Description:Cell spreading on a flat substrates.

Magnification: 40X

Instrument: Olympus CKX41

Submitted by: Anurag Mathur

Affiliation: Columbia University


MOST BIZARRE MICROGRAPH

Title: Snake Eyes

Description: Negative resist exposed by beam and covered by aluminum oxide

Magnification (3″x4″ image):  25,600X

Instrument (Make and Model): Raith 150

Submitted by: Sebastian Gautsch

Affiliation: EPFL Switzerland


HARDEST TO EXPLAIN MICROGRAPH

Title: I Sing the Electron Ecliptic

Description: Electron beams with helical wavefronts and orbital angular momentum are produced via diffraction from nanofabricated holograms.

Magnification (3″x4″ image):  about 4X

Instrument (Make and Model): Philips/FEI CM300

Submitted by: Benjamin McMorran

Affiliation: NIST


GRAND PRIZE

Title: Reading Tea Leaves

Description: SEM image of M.C. Escher’s 1948 Drop as “sketched” by e-beam lithography in such a way as to preserve the grayscale information. Medium: HSQ on Si

Magnification (3″x4″ image):3,300x

instrument (Make and Model): Elionix SirionESM-9000

Submitted by: Joel Yang

Affiliation: IMRE


HONORABLE MENTION

Title: Popping Poppies

Description: Top-down views animation of Directed Self-Assembled (DSA) PDMS pillars in various diameter size hole pre-patterns formed by optical lithography.

Magnification (3″x4″ image): 150,000x 

Instrument (Make and Model): SEM Hitachi CG4000

Submitted by: Y.Seino & T. Azuma

Affiliation: Toshiba Corp.,Japan


HONORABLE MENTION

Title: The Burghers of Calais

Description: This Si structure is etched by ICP with falling ebeam resist mask

Magnification (3″x4″ image): 23.45KX

Instrument (Make and Model):  Zeiss XB1540 EsB S4800 FESEM  

Submitted by: Jingyu Zhang, Deirdre Olynick & Stefano Cabrini

Affiliation: Nanofabrication group, the Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory


HONORABLE MENTION

Title: The Forge

Description: Si photonic crystals milled by FIB silica particles showing 100 crystal orientation

Magnification (3″x4″ image):4.58KX

Instrument (Make and Model):  Zeiss XB1540 EsB  

Submitted by: Jingyu Zhang, Deirdre Olynick & Stefano Cabrini

Affiliation: Nanofabrication group, the Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory


HONORABLE MENTION

Title: Nailed It!

Description: The photonic crystal structure is fabricated on Er 3+ doped SiNx with Cr mask . It’s over etched and the pillars are undercut and falling down.

Magnification (3″x4″ image):  32.94KX

Instrument (Make and Model): Zeiss XB1540 EsB

Submitted by: Jingyu Zhang, Nate Lawrence, Deirdre Olynick, Stefano Cabrini & Luca Dal Negro

Affiliation: The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Electrical Engineering Department, Boston University


HONORABLE MENTION

Title: The holly and ivy

Description: During milling of Si3N4 layer we found the holly and the ivy .

Magnification: 10000X

Instrument: Zeiss FEI Quanta 3D FEG

Submitted by: V.G. Kutchoukov, P. Kruit

Affiliation: TUDelft, The Netherlands


HONORABLE MENTION

Title: Water Lilies

Description: Secondary electron Photoemission Micrograph of Lateral Inhomogeneities in AlGaN.

Magnification (3″x4″ image): 423x (30um x 60um)

Instrument Maximum (UW Madison)

Submitted by: G. F. Lorusso, H Solak

Affiliation: IMEC, EULITHA


HONORABLE MENTION

Title: The Engineer’s Pole Dance (a little help please)

Description: Carbon nano-fibers on FEBID iron catalyst particle

Magnification (3″x4″ image):  50000

Instrument (Make and Model):FEBID, SEM

Submitted by: H.D.Wanzenboeck, G.Hochleitner

Affiliation: University of Technology Vienna, Austria


HONORABLE MENTION

Title: NBC

Description: Patterns with various thicknesses etched in a SiN membrane through apertures in a compliant stencil membrane.

Magnification (3″x4″ image): 50X

Instrument (Make and Model):    Nikon Eclipse L200

Submitted by: Veronica Savu

Affiliation: EPFL


HONORABLE MENTION

Note: To actually download(takes a while) and see video CLICK HERE

Title: Ode to Michael

Description: This is why you shouldn’t play music while doing experiments with microfluidic channels

Magnification (3″x4″ image): 20X

Instrument (Make and Model): Optical/Fluorescence Microscope (Nikon)

Submitted by: Irene Fernandez-Cuesta

Affiliation: DTU Nanotech & theMolecular Foundary(LBNL)


HONORABLE MENTION

Title: Hank’s River of Pain

Description: a freactured calcium oxalate kidney stone.

Magnification (3″x4″ image):

Instrument (Make and Model): Instrument (Make and Model): JEOL SEM, 6700

Submitted by: Hank Smith, Sisi Ni

Affiliation: MIT