January 3, 2008: Nano-explosions?

[Undertoad]

I say explosions, the official caption says explosions... but they aren't really explosions, they just look like it, in this nano-scale photograph. I'm not even sure nano-scale is a word, or a hyphenated word, so you can bet that the following quote, explaining the shot, just perplexes me. But the photo, by one Fanny Beron, won first place in the Materials Research Society "Science as Art" competition. And it's cool!

This color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph shows an array of CoFeB nanowires, grown by pulse-current electrodeposition in a nanoporous alumina template. During the electrodeposition process, some of the nanowires overflowed on the template surface. "It's a reminder that nanoscale research can have unpredicted consequences at a high level," Beron says.

Found here, used with permission of the Materials Research Society, photo credit Fanny Beron.