Lego2Nano Project

20 September 2013

The Institute of Making and the London Centre for Nanotechnology have teamed up with Tsinghua University and Peking University to take the challenge of developing a new type of low-cost scanning probe microscope with the the power to capture images of the nano world. At the start of September, 32 young scientists and designers from China and the UK came together to form four interdisciplinary teams, and faced their first challenge. They competed to build and present a working Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) capable of seeing objects only a millionth of a millimeter in size. In just one week. And with LEGO.

After the exciting experimental week and a nail-biting race to the finish at Tsinghua University, Institute of Making members and their new colleagues in China are now taking the project forward in the MakeSpace and at the London Centre for Nanotechnology. Their aim is now to refine the winning design to develop an open source AFM that can be built by high school students around the world, making use of LEGO, Arduino, cheap 3D printable parts and local components. Research-grade AFMs typically cost over £60,000 or more, but by using less specific, low cost AFMs, experiments can be carried out across the world, with a far larger amount of collected data shared and compared – the start of an exciting citizen science project.

Read much more about the summer school on the project wiki, and Tsinghua University's experimental learning hub Toyhouse.cc.