International SPM Image Competition

The biannual International Scanning Probe Microscopy Image Competition (ISPMIC) honors excellent scanning probe microscopy images. The idea for this contest stems from Spanish government officers and researchers; financing comes from Spanish institutions and private companies.

All images submitted to the ISPMIC competition are judged by an international panel of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) researchers, as well as by experts in scientific photography and scientific dissemination. The jury takes into account both scientific and artistic merits. Images are judged on the basis of their scientific quality, originality, imagination, visual impact, and the ability to capture relevant aspects of the nanoscale. ISPMIC is open to individuals from institutions, research organizations, or companies. The ISP-MIC is restricted to scientific images obtained using SPM techniques—scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs), atomic force microscopes (AFMs), magnetic force microscopes (MFMs), and scanning near-field optical microscopes (SNOMs), among others—that are processed using a special version of the SPM freeware software WSxM. Theoretical simulations of SPM images are also welcome.

The SPMage 2007 competition drew more than 300 submissions. The first prize went to A. Fuhrer from ETH [Page 361]Zürich (Switzerland) for his image titled “Nano Rings.” Second place went to L.P. Silva from EMBRAPA Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnología Brasilia for “The Surface of Human Red Blood Cells After Treatment With Antibiotic Peptide.” Third place went to K. Demidenok from the Leibniz-Institut für Polymer Forschung (Germany) for “Root.” Fourth place went to C. Krull from the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) for “Thymine Integrated Circuits Grown on Silver Terminated Silicon (111) R3xR3,” and fifth place went to C. Munuera from ICMM-CSIC, Madrid (Spain), for “Daisy Flowers in the Nanoworld.”

The SPMage09 first prize went to L. Ang from NUS (Singapore) for “Human Malaria (Plasmodium malariae) Infected Red Blood Cells.” S. Otte from NIST (the United States) won second prize for “Atom Spangled Patchwork.” The third prize (1,250 euros) went to S. Abetkovskaia from the A.V. Luikov Heat and Mass Transfer Institute (Belarus) for her “Winter-Time Nanofishing.” The fourth prize went to F. Mantegazza from the Universita' degli studi di Milano-Bicocca (Italy) for his “Venis of Coral,” and the fifth prize went to M.C. Redon from the Centre d'Investigació en Nanociencia i Nanotecnologia (Spain) for “Looking for the Summer Ice.”