"World's smallest house" is built on the optical fiber cross section

French researchers have succeeded in assembling "the smallest house in the world" on the optical fiber cross section as thick as the hair.

Smallest microhouse in the world, assembled on the facet of an optical fiber by origami and welded in the μRobotex nanofactory: Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A: Vol 36, No 4
https://avs.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1116/1.5020128

Succeeded in assembling the "world's smallest house"Femto-ST InstituteDr. Jean-Yves Raucha's research team. In the experiment, we focused on "focused ion beam (FIB) and dual beam scan SEM"Zeiss Auriga 60We used SmarAct made for assembly6 DoFMicrorobot was used.

Thin film silica (silicon dioxide) was adopted as the material of the house. An "origami" method was adopted, in which thin silica was etched using a gallium ion beam to give a difference in thickness, and it was folded into a solid by a robot.


Make a foundation on the cross section of the optical fiber. The world's smallest home footprint is 25 micrometers by 25 micrometers.


Cut out the developed map of the house ......


While building the reinforcing pillars inside, fold the wall and assemble the house.


The completed house is like this. Hold a gabled roof with seven windows and tiled patterns. In addition, it is said that the white object visible on the roof is a "chimney". Since Besançon, France with research laboratory, snow falls in winter, it seems that a chimney is essential.


Of course, the experiment is not aimed at creating a model of a small house, but by combining dual beam SEM and FIB, to demonstrate the high precision of microrobot control technology "μRobotex" that can form a very small size three-dimensional object I heard that I was.