MXene Lighthouse

Submitted by Mohit Saraf
Drexel University

This SEM image represents Ti3C2 MXene cliff which is being buffeted by star-speckled waves. No matter how dark it may become, the lighthouse will continue to light the way. Scale bar is 1μm.

A 3-D Printed Molecular Ferroelectric Metamaterial

Submitted by Yong Hu
University at Buffalo

Pictured is an artistic rendering of manufacturing mechanical metamaterial of imidazolium perchlorate by the stereolithography method. The printed molecular ferroelectric metamaterial structure is shown to enable a tunable-frequency vibration-isolating architecture.

Rooms in the Silver-Platinum Nanowire

Submitted by Serkan Koylani
Middle East Technical University

Galvanic replacement between platinum and silver results in the formation of the small islands on the silver nanowires during platinum deposition. We considered those islands as rooms of a house by referring to Richard Feynman's very famous comment on nanoworld. The original image was obtained using JEOL JEM-2100F Transmission Electron Microscope in high-resolution mode (HR-TEM).

Calcite Flower

Submitted by Arad Lang
Technion

Calcite incorporated with aspartic acid, grown using a hydrothermal method. Taken with Ultra+ HR-SEM (Mag of X5.3k).

Jean-Henri Fabri's Dream Garden

Submitted by Libin Yang
Syracuse University

The best way to know the world is to observe, and people throughout history have devoted themselves to observing and recording everything they see, just as Jean-Henri Fabre did 100 years ago, in a garden called Harmas de s érignan, trying to use watercolors to render this ingenious creature, the fungus. This figure is reproduced based on a Scanned Electronic Microscope image of Pleurotus Eryngii mycelium growing on a hardwood substrate. Pleurotus Eryngii belongs to the basidiomycetes has a unique structure of their mycelium called clamp connection ((L. Yang, D. Park, Z. Qin, Material Function of Mycelium-Based Bio-Composite: A Review, Frontier in Materials, 2021)). The logic behind the creation of this art piece is, through SEM, we can get infinitely closer to that tiny and fascinating world. As with the first discovery of a universe in a drop of water, there is always a romantic fantasy of what has never been seen which is to Imagine the universe not only diversification but also uniqueness. These microscopic structures, and the ideals that people seek, reflect the obscure but exact truth of nature.

Nano Constellation

Submitted by Mahshid Iraniparast
Tufts University

This is the image of ultrabright fluorescent silica nanoparticles with confocal microscopy. However, I saw a night sky full of shiny stars with different constellations, including Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.