Nano PacMan, self-illuminating flowers and other winning nanotechnology images

(Nanowerk News) Here is another installment of our collection of amazing images from nanotechnology labs from all over the world. You can find other nanotechnology images here.

During the 2010 MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco in April, the MRS conducted the ninth installment of the popular "Science as Art" competition (View winners from past competitions). Here are the six first-place and second-place winners:

Nano PacMan made of copper oxide Scanning electron microscope image of a copper oxide cluster, 3.5 microns in diameter, prepared by evaporation and condensation over an alumina substrate. The smiley nose and eye are present in the original SEM image, which has only been color-enhanced. (Image: Elisabetta Comini, University of Brescia, Italy)

ZnO Nanowire Arrays SEM image of vertically aligned ZnO nanowire arrays with a standing human-like form. Color was added to the original image. (Image:Surawut Chuangchote, Kyoto University )

Self-illuminating flowers of Pandora This picture is created from a high resolution SEM image of a zinc oxide "nanoflower" synthesized by a physical vapor deposition technique. (Image: Jian Shi, University of Wisconsin )

Micro Sea MA scanning electron microscope image of the 250 nm diameter polymer fibers capturing 2 µm polymer spheres by evaporative self-assembly. The image brings to mind eggs of fish on marine plants in the sea. The SEM image was taken by a Zeiss Ultra 55 field emission scanning electron microscope and color enhancement was done using Adobe Photoshop. (Image: Sung H. Kang, Harvard University)

Bad Pitch SEM image of microbeads lying outside a self-assembled 500 micron sized box. (Image: David Gracias, Johns Hokins University)

Watermelon on Pandora Colorized SEM image of the superparamagnetic poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) microspheres with Fe 2 O 3 nanocrystals self-assembly on the surface and inside. (Image: Yongxing Hu, University of California, Riverside)