McMaster researcher mounts tiny flag within surface of a penny

A McMaster University researcher is celebrating Canada’s 150 in a very tiny way.

Travis Casagrande, a research engineer with the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy, has fabricated a microscopic Canadian flag hidden within the surface of a penny.

Casagrande and his team used a focused ion beam microscope to mount the three-dimensional flag on a flagpole 1/100th the diameter of a human hair.

Casagrande created the tiny flag by using a focused beam of charged particles to carve a tiny hole in the penny, leaving the flagpole standing in the centre.

He then moved the beam to a different area and cut the flag from the material’s surface. Casagrande ‘raised’ the flag by attaching it to the pole with a deposited metal layer. The maple leaf design was carved into the flag using the focused beam.

“At the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy, part of our mission is to spread knowledge of materials science and the capabilities of electron microscopy to a broad Canadian audience. It is great fun, this year, to combine this with our little contribution to Canada’s birthday celebrations,” said CCEM Scientific Director Gianluigi Botton.

Casagrande said the project was inspired by Canada’s 150th birthday and to demonstrate the capabilities of one of the centre’s high-powered microscopes.