Cornell University researchers have etched the world’s smallest, full-color American flag on a silicon chip. The flag is part of an elaborate nanofabrication that includes six full-color flags and 15 White Houses, all etched on the chip. The size of a postage stamp, the chip has been placed in a Lucite paperweight that was presented to the White House on March 30 in Washington, D.C., by Joshua Wolfe, a 1999 Cornell graduate and managing partner of Lux Capital, a New York City venture capital firm specializing in nanotechnology. All told, the chip features 15 monochrome images of the White House flanked by six full-color American flags, embedded with microscopic features that reflect the colors of the stars and stripes. There are three visible White House images and a dozen nano-size ones, 500 microns wide and 225 microns high, that appear as dots without magnification. The flag and the White House images were produced using advanced photolithographic tools in the National Science Foundation–supported Cornell Nanoscale Facility.

—Blaine P. Friedlander Jr., Cornell News Service