Actually I think your real speed is 12''/min (30cm/min), I can see in the video the lamination lasted about 40s, not 1 min, maybe 20cm/min speed in the paper was underestimated. Thanks to the video now I know.

@@Ledeaven Hi, have you been able to reproduce this technique successfully? If yes, would you mind sharing what PVA sheet you used? Much appreciated.

Yeah, we realise after making this Christmas card, that people want to hear it play. So, how to do that!? Making something as small as this rotate is not very easy - or rather, super hard. Rotation is notoriously difficult. So while the record (which is what you see: a plastic plate with engravings) does contain a similar grooves as the original image, we cannot play it back in a way resembling a record player. We could start an R&D project trying to develop such a thing. That would be a massive waste of taxpayers money. Alternatively, we could (that means I could) write a program that decodes the measured height map, but it would scan from left to right - not quite like a real record player. While its tempting to do it, its a little bit overkill. So yeah we definitely made the smallest christmas record in the world, and we definitely have not played it back. People have also made tiny model clocks, airplanes and cars using extreme nanofabrication - but the clocks dont work, the airplanes dont fly and the cars dont drive. We just wanted to spread some smiles, as it was Christmas time, and we usually to do something fun with our nanotoolbox that time a year. So, maybe I get around to writing the software program that decodes it an converts it back to music - but will it sell? Probably not :) ... in any case, thanks for the interest. We always try to find new ways to reach out. Cheers and greetings from Denmark.

ahh! maybe its not clear that the image at the end is the measurement of the record? That is as close as we get to "seeing" those details. Its small!

Here is the worlds smallest car. www.core77.com/posts/21973/worlds-smallest-race-car-sets-record-for-fastest-nanoscale-3d-printing-21973

Worlds smallest guitar: news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/07/worlds-smallest-silicon-mechanical-devices-are-made-cornell

All in all, our chances of getting sound out of the record are better than getting driving out of the nanocar, or tones out of the nanoguitar... but in my experience, models made at this scale or often not functional. However, im thinking about a concept like a "virtual pickup" that digitally would operate in analogy to a real pickup, i.e. following the track and picking up the modulations. It would probably be useless, except satisfying yours (and my) curiosity about what it sounds like ....:)

i think i made the mistake at encoding it with constant speed instead of constant RPM - stupid me! The oscillations should be stretched at the outer part, because the "pickup" goes faster for larger radii. HOWEVER, there is roughly 2.2 mm groove, spaced by 450 nm or so. Thats like 80 micrometer per second.

We would share it if we had it :D ... my honest guess is that it would sound distorted. We did this whole thing in a 3-4 days; it would take quite a bit longer to optimise it to get a 1:1 reproduction (which is needed to avoid scratches and unwanted overtones/distortion) of the sound. But, I am getting curious :)

yes! i have wanted to make a rotational micro- or nanomotor for years.... that is damn hard though. To play it we would probably have to decode it from left to right, which is not as fun. Nolan actually came up with a scheme for decoding it circularly, i.e. getting a tiny needle to follow the circle around. It would require some months of hard work to change a socalled Atomic Force Microscope to do that... the AFM is anyway like a tiny record player.... so while the record will not be rotating, we could still (maybe) get the needle to decode the groove by a spiralling motion, by overriding the built-in scanner, that is enforcing a rectangular (left-right raster) scan. I hope it makes sense. Bottom line: shamefully we dont even know how to make a record player with a rotating plate, however, we COULD get an AFM (check out youtube videos on those, they are cool) to do a spiral tracking of the groove.

thanks! corrected.

its not about the music :) ... what this REALLY is about is that we can now pretty much for the first time, sculpt surfaces on the 10 nm scale. And THAT can make 2D materials do crazy things. We like crazy, because sometimes with a lot of imagination and engineering, we can turn crazy into awesome, and awesome into useful. Which is our real job. Once per year we make a silly christmas greeting like this (scientists just wanna have fun), so I hope you enjoyed it a little bit :)

@@NanoClips nah you didn't understand my comment. The link that led us all here was talking about 25s of music. "So much about", means "if you ever expected to know what was put on it, dream on". Obviously I wasn't commenting the feat.; but rather the shitty press that gets you to listen to a whole youtube with a lot of perhaps interesting but very technically thorough data that we can't personally exploit in our daily lives, all that to hear absolutely nothing.

@@Noweee ok then Im really happy we didnt make the worlds smallest aeroplane :)

@@PeterBoggild journalists would have led people into thinking you'd see it fly. Google would have shared it as a "pretty flight of the smallest plane on earth". People would have seen a very long technical clip without any poetry, flight, and with content they can't relate to anything they know. Then it'd have been the exact same issue. This youtube isn't even an introduction to that technology, please don't assume that people know anything about your field of work. Sometimes, you ought to level down, obviously, and if for that everyone believes I'm a shit or an idiot, then so be it. Vulgarization: The process of making something accessible and attractive to the general public; the popular-science presentation of a topic, its popularization. You've done the later without doing the former. And for that, I believe my time was lost. And to answer and explain all this to you, some more of it.

@@Noweee Yeah, its a bit long. Its my fault because I try to explain why this is not just useful for making Christmas cards, but also for crazy physics, which I love. Not everyone loves crazy physics! I think probably - as a musician myself - having measured the groove I know the information is there, and that it can be decoded. I mean if you write something, and can read it back, the information is there. But admittedly, its a bit lazy and unscientific to assume that. Next time we release records like this, we will definitely sort out some kind of way to play them back first! Since we are paid by taxpayers money, we should probably think about a really good reason to spend time on that though :) thanks for watching, in any case. I hope it wasnt a total waste of time! (twas just a christmas greeting).

i COULD write the program that reads it back; it is a bit more complicated to write the decoder, compared to the encoder. I am however chilling out with my family enjoying Christmas and some rest, and we probably spent enough time on this already :) ...twas fun though! I had to do some low-pass filtering for the oscillations to be resolved, so the sound quality would not be great. I cant remember how much I cut, but it should be recognizable. BTW, some (less aggressive) filtering is also done with real vinyl records to avoid excessive oscillations that the pickup cannot trace properly - a bit the same.

@@NanoClips Thanks for replying! Yeah, Good job, and just rest on your laurels! I'm a physicist, so I have some appreciation for what you did. My friend would be disappointed if the guitar didn't sound great! The guitar player who did the opening riff is alive and living with his son, who builds telecasters as a side job on evenings and weekends.

@@seattenber thanks :) I think now that I am happy we didnt make the worlds smallest aeroplane or space rocket :D However, I think I will have a go at it, and hear what it sounds like. Many people want to hear the sound (but do they?). Sounds really cool with your friend, parenting done right both ways it seems like. I play guitars but sadly dont build them

@@PeterBoggild Yeah, give it a listen, but be careful how and whether you reveal it. People will be bringing you meteorites with scratches and wanting to know if it's a message from aliens.

yes, i may write the decoder some day. This is too small to be rotated (rotating small things around an axis is surprisingly hard). Translation (x,y,z) is easy, rotation is hard. SO; the "playback" would involve me writing some kind of virtual pickup that based on an image such as the one shown, can "track" the spiral, and both extract the lateral oscillations and the depth modulation, which correspond to left and right channel.

🎵beep boop🎵 screeeee

I dont think very enjoyable. My guess is pretty distorted and also without a lot of high frequency content. I wrote the encoder (program to convert sound file to a spiral image bitmap) and i had to cut off some high frequency content to avoid to extreme "wriggles". But it should be recognizable (or it would be cheating). I hope to get time to do that ;-) as my nerdy self is asking for it as well as you!

Hi Marie-Eve, yes Zan Mahmood has now established a start up company to further develop it, working with schools and scientists - pretty exciting. Its called nanoscalesimulations.com/

its different. It does not replace an EBL. For us we can do some of the structures we need with a much shorter turn-around time, but for other kinds of layouts, EBL is better and more efficient. The writing field for the Nanofrazor is 60 x 60 micrometer. The depth control is the real advantage. The tip will accumulate stuff, and need replacement fairly often, so there is that. All in all, i think this will (1) speed up device fabrication a lot for 70% of what we do and (2) allow us to control the surface contour of 2D materials.

@@NanoClips Still, there are charge build-up concerns on some nanoscale fractal patterns for my samples that are not suitable for EBL. I can deal with the probe replacements 😌.

i see what you mean. Definitely, this technique is a hit in situations where proximity effects and charging is a worry. That does not mean that proximity (probe) effects are not present, they just dont act on scales larger than 20 nm.@@ONRIPRESENCE

Chemical Vapor Deposition: you heat up a piece of copper (we use very clean foil bought in rolls) in an atmosphere of methane and hydrogen in a special oven called a furnace... to a temperature of 1050 C. At this temperature the methane cracks into carbon and hydrogen, allowing carbon atoms to make a monolayer (1 atom thin) of graphene on the copper foil. We let it cool down, and there we are!

kzbin.info/www/bejne/gWSTan5jeaukpqc

yes! my first thought... im not sure what a spandril is, but they do look fractal. They probably are self-similar to some extent.

holy moly you have good eyes :)

the video shows how to transfer the graphene to polymer rolls. The christmas tree was cut out with a pair of scissors from one such 10 meter long roll of graphene (on polymer). The colorful image was recorded with a similar THz spectrometer as the one shown in the video. We still dont know how to grow the graphene in the shape of the tree - but we do know how to make 100 meter continuous roll of graphene, which we could bag and ship for you or anyone else to use for your applications or whatever :) .... we are a university, so we cannot operate as a company, though, and sell stuff. But we may make a spinout company that can. Short answer: the video shows the machine that made the graphene for the tree, and took a picture of it. Pair of scissors must be added :D

send us an email

dear polkadot. Do you mean that you cannot watch it?

​ @CNG NanoClips I can watch it on KZbin, but two days ago I could not download the video with 4K Video Downloader. Apparently someone (maybe KZbin) blocked this video. The makers of the 4K Video Downloader made two updates yesterday (apparently to defeat the blocking). The updates were successful - I downloaded 2K version of this video today. By the way, I do not have time to watch videos on KZbin. If a video looks interesting, I download it, watch the best parts, and get detailed info about the topic from the Internet.

@@polka23dot70 Im glad you sorted it out. I am not experienced in downloading videos from youtube.

Great that you liked it - yeah, this years CBH talks are generally pretty hardcore:) .... but what Nancy did was to also record a tutorial, which i think is a great idea... like some warm up before the heavy lifting!

I think the PVA supplier should be in the paper? Try to write Abhay, and ask what he used ([email protected])

no... not anything special. It would usually be a good idea if it is not dirty.

it might... we have tried a few different types of laminator machines... probably some relatively stable mechanics and temperature control is an advantage, but it might work with very simple equipment ... and its as safe for kids, as a desktop laminator --- excellent for corona-compatible research (at home)!

@@NanoClips Hi, we tried it here at RIT using the exact same laminator as in your video, and it worked for us. We bought the graphene from graphene supermarket and the PVA "Blank Hydrographic Printing Film" from amazon. We had to run it through the laminator 3 or 4 times for the transfers to occur. Both from graphene to PVA and then to SiO2. Also, when we did get it to work, the graphene was not continuous with regions of about 300 to 500 um. It did show a very large G' peak though :-). We'll update you if we make improvements but we plan to fabricate some devices.

@@ivanpuchades5935 Thank you for sharing your experience. If you run 3 or 4 times this is an indication that the process is not yet optimized. One of the reasons could be the non-uniform temperature. If the temperature is low enough it would require several passes and if it is important, there is a risk of forming air bubbles (few hundred microns in size) between the graphene and the adhesive which would require the operation under vacuum as suggested at the end of the video. One other parameter is the PVA thickness. Do you have an idea on the PVA thickness, delamination temperature and speed used in your experiment? It will be great if you make a return.

@@Orientaliszt Thanks for your reply. We are using the same laminator as in your video (Akiles Pro-Lam Photo 13" 6 Roller Pouch Laminator) at a speed setting of 1 (which I measured to be ~38 cm/min in my system (1-inch in 4 seconds), that is almost 2x the speed that your paper suggests (!?)) and a temperature of 110 °C. The PVA thickness is 2 mils (50 microns). Another variable we introduced is that we left the copper/graphene sheet soak in DI water for 4 days. Do you think this could have made a difference in the quality of the transfer? Thank you!

@@Orientaliszt do you recommend PVA thickness of any specific value/quality for the process?

hi , sorry - didnt see :) ... the supplier should be in the article. If not, please send email to Abhay Shivayogimath and ask (first author)

Hi. I was wondering if you managed to obtain the PVA foils and if you would mind sharing the supplier, thank you.

トラファルガーデスポセイドン no not completely - buy its cleaner than with the other methods. Sorry for the long wait - i didnt see your question

It is as flat as the substrate allows it to be. Graphene is intrinsically atomically flat, but will cling to the surface - if the substrate is flat, the graphene will typically be. There are, however, differences in how many wrinkles the graphene has, depending on how it was fabricated. So, the quality of the graphene and the copper substrate (including flatness) also has a lot to say. The rolling can also introduce rolling lines, i.e. line shaped cracks or folds, perpendicular to the rolling direction. So yes, in principle, the method can make the graphene as flat as you want it, but it depends on a number of factors whether you will get this result, including the flatness of the substrate. The contamination is not zero, but the PVA washes away really nicely in warm water.

well - yes - we are working on that. You will hear more later :D

@@NanoClips PM me if you ever want to talk. I own a small manufacturing company and we have produced graphene on a roll to roll copper substrate.

@@ThePuttercross Really - interesting. We also have other things going on that might be of interest to you, like large-scale THz-based electrical characterisation - which we are currently fitting on a R2R transfer system

So, there you go. We just automatised it - check the two videos just uploaded :)

let us know if you run into any trouble... we find that it works better for reasonably good graphene; if the grains are small, it tends to break up more. You may also want to experiment with heating time and temperatures. It works pretty robustly across a number of substrates for us, but we have not tried every type of graphene with every type of substrate.

@@PeterBoggild okay... I make graphene on copper substrates too... I have to find this PVA films.. I wonder if I can find this here in Brazil

@@renatoberaldo2335 I believe you can buy it on Amazon? The type should be in the paper. If you cant find it, write to abhay ([email protected])...

@@PeterBoggild Im trying to find this PVA, but without success.. I'll send an email to you... tks dude!!

@@renatoberaldo2335 did you already?