Salt trees
This scanning electron micrograph shows potassium chloride whiskers grown on a salt-solution–saturated nanoporous coating. This technique to fabricate micro- and nanosized one-dimensional single crystal salt at room temperature and pressure could be applied to other water soluble salts. By purposely over-seeding, the whiskers pick up the extra seeds around them during growth and form a salt-tree “forest” with other salt “grass” and salt “bushes” covering the ground and a salt-“deer” walking through the woods.
Heng Zhang and Lorraine F. Francis, University of Minnesota, USA
The bear necessities
This Nano-Teddy was assembled by superimposing multiple scanning electron micrographs obtained at different magnifications of primarily hexagonal hollow ZnO nanocone structures. The floating ball in front of the bear shows one of these structures in greater detail. The “bamboo-like” structures have also been obtained with the same ZnO growth process, but at different process conditions. The hollow ZnO nanocones were grown on Si substrates using a low pressure catalyst-free metal–organic chemical vapor deposition process.
Wei Zhang, CVD Equipment Corporation, USA
