Western University researcher creates world's 'smallest snowman'

The figure was made from three extremely small silica spheres stacked on top of each other, with arms and a nose made of platinum, said Todd Simpson, from Western University's Nanofabrication Facility and called it world’s “smallest snowman”, reported CP24.

The facility published an image of the tiny smiling figure online.

"It's just a compelling little image, especially for the time of year," said Simpson adding that he made the figure to promote the lab’s works.

"It's not easy to find something that's easy for people to comprehend -- most of what we do is pretty complicated and probably kind of boring to most," he said. "It's not something we set out to make, it was something that I found on a sample made for another purpose but it only took a few minutes to give him arms and a face and a nose."

The notion of creating this tiny figure originated in December 2005, when Simpson created fabricated silica spheres and stacked three of them together which resembled a snowman.

At that time he had used microscope software program feature to draw a face and arms on an image of one triple stack. The picture was then placed on the lab's Christmas card.

This year Simpson experimented with a Focused Ion Beam instrument and created physical platinum arms and facial features for the triple stack of silica spheres.

"I've been meaning to do this for a while," he said. "It's obviously something you want to do just before Christmas. I had the sample sitting there, waiting for a chance ... I had some spare time so I just popped it in and made it up."

The figure is less than 3 microns tall and can only be seen with an electron microscope, Simpson said adding for further clarification that a human hair is about 50 microns in diameter.

The tiny figure of the snowman which sits on a silicon wafer has been placed in its carrier box and stored in the lab, Simpson said and added that it can be brought out at any desired time.

(Reported by Asha Bajaj)