In a sealed room at Loughborough University, where even a mote of dust could sabotage the work, a group of physicists have crafted a violin so small it could sit on the back of an amoeba. It’s just 35 microns long — smaller than the thickness of a single human hair — and made not from wood and string, but from platinum, etched onto a silicon chip with surgical precision.
It looks like a joke, and in a way, it is. The sound of the “world’s smallest violin” has long been a punchline for mock sympathy.
The expression “Can you hear the world’s smallest violin playing just for you?” is thought to have first appeared on television in the 1970s, popularised by the show M*A*S*H, and has remained part of pop culture thanks to appearances in more recent shows like SpongeBob SquarePants, as well as a deep-dive into its origin by ClassicFM.
But this microscopic rendering is not just a meme. It’s a proof of concept — an elegant, atom-scale doodle that opens the door to deeper scientific discovery.
“Though creating the world’s smallest violin may seem like fun and games, a lot of what we’ve learned in the process has actually laid the groundwork for the research we’re now undertaking,” said Kelly Morrison, the physicist leading the project.
A Tiny Violin Etched in Platinum
At this scale, everything changes. Human hair typically ranges between 17 and 180 microns wide. The violin on the chip is thinner than a tardigrade’s leg. Viewed under a microscope, the image reveals elegant curves and delicate proportions. To the naked eye, it’s less than a speck.
Creating it required more than a steady hand — it demanded a room-sized machine known as the NanoFrazor.
The process began with a chip coated in two layers of a gel-like material known as a resist. A heated, needle-thin tip — as sharp as it is precise — etched the violin shape into the top layer using a technique called thermal scanning probe lithography. In that moment, the gel vaporized, leaving a microscopic trench in the shape of a violin.
Next, the researchers dissolved the underlayer to hollow out a mold. Then they deposited a thin film of platinum inside the cavity, and finally rinsed the rest away with acetone. What remained was a gleaming, impossibly tiny violin made of metal.
Each image takes around three hours to produce. But this final version took months of trial-and-error, as the team experimented with different settings, materials, and refinements.
“I’m really excited about the level of control and possibilities we have with the setup,” said Morrison. “I’m looking forward to seeing what I can achieve – but also what everyone else can do with the system.”
Beyond the Gag: A Platform for Discovery
While the violin may have started as a whimsical demonstration of precision, it now plays a serious role in science. It was the first creation of a powerful new nanolithography system at Loughborough, one that allows scientists to sculpt materials at atomic scales.
“Our nanolithography system allows us to design experiments that probe materials in different ways — using light, magnetism, or electricity — and observe their responses,” Morrison explained.
This ability can help scientists probe how materials behave at the nanoscale, a scale at which the familiar laws of physics begin to bend to the will of quantum mechanics. Molecules rearrange, electrical properties shift, and behaviors emerge that can’t be seen in bulk materials. That’s why these systems are so promising.
“Once we understand how materials behave, we can start applying that knowledge to develop new technologies, whether it’s improving computing efficiency or finding new ways to harvest energy,” she added.
Nanolithography is already laying the groundwork for the next generation of electronics — devices faster, smaller, and more energy-efficient than ever. The ability to customize structures at this scale could also lead to breakthroughs in quantum computing, photonics, and biosensing.
And it all starts with understanding the fundamentals — precisely what this project aims to do.
