0.0019685

The smallest Chanukiyah is 0.0019685 inches (0.05mm)

World's smallest hanukkiya shown next to human hair

 

In honor of Hanukkah a physics laboratory at Hebrew University in Jerusalem has built the world's tiniest hanukkiah (menorah for Hanukkah). The hanukkiah, which is the size of a dust speck, demonstrates the revolutionary abilities of the lab's Nanoscribe system.

 

The Jerusalem-based laboratory, part of the Peter Brojde Center for Innovative Engineering and Computer Science, focuses on applying scientific discoveries into ground-breaking technology.

 

As part of its state-of-the-art research, Brojde lab recently became home of the first and only Nanoscribe system in Israel. To demonstrate the Nanoscribe's capabilities in constructing miniscule three-dimensional structures, Yossi Kabessa and Ido Eisenberg, two doctoral students at the lab, recently built the tiniest hanukkiah in the world.

 

Standing at less than a tenth of a milimeter and invisible to the naked eye, the microscopic menorah is built of building blocks measuring 100 nanometers.

 

Professor Aharon Agranat, Director of the Brojde Center, notes that his laboratory specializes in technological breakthroughs called "heterogeneous integration" that allow the combination in one system of various abilities such as portability, sense, data processing and communication.

 

The Nanoscribe system's capabilities are crucial for the lab to develop innovative "heterogeneous integration" technology, which has very practical applications.

 

An example of the technology's potential is the creation of a physical interface between electronic signal processing devices with opto-electronic devices. With such technology it would be possible to build a new type of network able to sense its surroundings and influence it directly. Such a breakthrough would bring a revolution to the fields of medicine, environmental protection, military and the war on terror.

 

Another groundbreaking technology which the Nanoscribe's capabilities can help the Brojde lab develop is known as "lab-on-a-chip," miniature systems that allow execution of chemical and biological process and physical measurements of samples ranging from nano-liters to micro-liters.

 

With "lab-on-a-chip," instead of bringing patients and samples to a lab, it is possible to bring the lab to the patient and send results through a network to a source for evaluation and appropriate action. While the technology already exists, Professor Agranat comments that it is far from realizing its revolutionary practical potential, and that Nanoscribe's production technology may be a foundation stone for developing the necessary complex combined systems.