Description:

While the microsopic guitar previously made by Cornell University researchers was just a whimsical demonstration of new nanofabrication technology, this "stringed instrument" plays the real music of science, serving as a platform to study the physics of very small vibrating systems.

The new device, carved out of a single crystal of silicon with advanced versions of the methods used to build tiny electronic circuits, consists of two endpieces, one square and one triangular, with several "strings" of varying lengths stretching between them. The strings are actually silicon rods 50 nanometers (nm) in diameter, ranging from about 1000 to 8000 nm long. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, making each string about 150 atoms thick. The entire device is about the size of a red blood cell.

The researchers have measured vibrations at frequencies from 15 Mhz up to 380 Mhz.  The system can detect a motion of as little as one nanometer or even less.

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