Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that today is St Patricks day.
Trinitiy College in Dublin decided to celebrate the day in their own way, by creating the worlds smallest shamrock. AMBER, Irelands national materials science centre, based at Trinity College, etched a nano sized shamrock on to a Trinity College lapel pin, which was later presented to the recipient of the SFI St Patricks Day Science Medal in Washington DC on March 13th.
AMBER, Trinity College, Dublin.
The etching is 200,000 times smaller than a grain of salt and 500 could sit side by side on a single strand of human hair. It was created using the AMBER Helium Ion Microscope, which enables extremely high resolution imaging of less than 1 nanometre. Check out the AMBER microscope at work here