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posted by martyb on Friday June 01 2018, @08:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the do-the-windows-open? dept.

Scientists Built the World's Smallest House

Tiny houses are all the rage these days, but scientists have shrunk the trend to proportions far too small for humans—or mites, for that matter.

As Becky Ferreira reports for Motherboard, nanorobotics researchers at the Femto-ST Institute in Besançon, France have built a house that measures just 20 micrometers long, making it the smallest house in the world. The itsy-bitsy dwelling would "not even able to accommodate a mite," the team writes in a paper published in the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A.

The house was made from a layer of silica set on the tip of an optical fiber that measures less than the width of a human hair, according to Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch. Researchers used a device called the μRobotex platform, which combines three existing technologies: a dual scanning electron microscope/focused ion beam, a gas injection system and a tiny maneuverable robot.

Smallest microhouse in the world, assembled on the facet of an optical fiber by origami and welded in the μRobotex nanofactory (DOI: 10.1116/1.5020128) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 01 2018, @12:14PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 01 2018, @12:14PM (#687201) Journal

    Actually, they are Belgian [wikipedia.org]

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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