The World’s Smallest Snowman

The snowman above is only 10 µm across, 1/5th the width of a human hair and was made by scientists at my place of work; the National Physical Laboratory.

The snowman was made from two tin beads used to calibrate electron microscope astigmatism. The eyes and smile were milled using a focused ion beam, and the nose, which is under 1 µm wide (or 0.001 mm), is ion beam deposited platinum.

More information: www.npl.co.uk/christmas