A team of scientists from Singapore have developed a device that shrunk an image of a Playboy centrefold to the width of human hair. Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) researchers printed a colour photograph that measures just 50 micrometres across.
The photograph is a crop of the portrait of Lena Soderberg, a Swedish model, which had originally appeared in a 1972 issue of Playboy.
The researchers have said that the device could produce colour images of up to 100,000 dots per inch - 10 times as much as a high-end home printer.
The method could be used to print tiny watermarks or secret messages for security purposes, the scientists have said.
"Our colour-mapping strategy produces images with both sharp colour changes and fine tonal variations, is amenable to large-volume colour printing... and could be useful in making micro-images for security," the BBC quoted the team as saying in their research paper.
According to Chad Mirkin, a nonotechnology professor from Chicago's Northwestern University who was not involved in the study, says that the result is "approaching the limit of what is possible to print in colour."
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To obtain the image, the researchers used tiny silver and gold particles, which when arranged in a certain way, produced colour.
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"Instead of taking normal dyes and using conventional printing, they're making colours out of one material by adjusting nanostructure in a lithographic [a technique to create patterns] experiment.
"They're getting these high-resolution images in a context of colour, and getting the colour in a way different from dyes that make up clothing or pigments in paint," he added.
However, he stressed that it was not an advance in high-resolution printing, as there were other techniques that were substantially superior.
The findings has been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Source-ANI