Nano-Bible

In 2007, scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, reproduced the entire Hebrew Bible on a silicon chip measuring less than 1/1,000th of an inch, demonstrating recent advances in miniaturization technology. The silicon chip, which is the size of a grain of sugar, was first coated with a layer of gold 20 nanometers (nm) thick, whereupon a focused ion beam (FIB) generator used gallium ions to etch away the gold layer in order to reveal the silicon base, thus inscribing the text on the chip.

The idea for the project was conceived by Uri Sivan, a physics professor and director of the Russell Bernie Nanotechnology Institute. Ohad Zohar, a physics education advise or with the Institute, and Alex Lahav, former head of the FIB lab at the Wolfson Microelectronics Research and Teaching Center, managed the project and conducted the experiment.

The project was part of an educational program intended to raise public awareness about and interest in nanotechnology, particularly among young people. The experiment investigated ways that miniature structures could be created and imaged at the nanoscale. To make the intent of the project more accessible to the public and to capture the layperson's imagination, the project posed the question, “How small can the Bible be?” The ion particle beam could have used any pattern of points to demonstrate its inscription capabilities, but using a pattern of points that specifically represent text helped the researchers to concretize the project's focus on miniaturization techniques and the potential harbored therein for high-density data storage. The Bible in particular was chosen because it contains approximately 10 million bits of data. According to Sivan, the creation of the Nano-Bible is a step toward the eventual goal of using DNA and other biomolecules to store information.

It took 90 minutes for the computer-guided ion beam generator to etch patterns of points that would ultimately comprise the text's 308,428 Hebrew words, complete with vowel indications. Each point measured approximately 40 nm in diameter and can be read under a scanning electron microscope.

Researchers subsequently photographed the Nano-Bible and displayed it in the faculty of Physics at 10,000x magnification (measuring 23 feet × 23 feet) where its 3mm-high letters can be read with the naked eye. The original Nano-Bible, occupying an area smaller than a pinhead, is displayed alongside the photograph. The accomplishment has also been used to highlight Israel's contribution to advances in nanotechnology.