Scientists from Nottingham have sent a microscopic birthday message to the Queen – written on a strand of hair from a Corgi dog.
Experts at the University of Nottingham used a special microscope to write ‘Happy 90th Birthday Your Majesty’.
It was created by Dr Michael Fay from the Faculty of Engineering and Christopher Parmenter from the School of Pharmacy.
The technology used a focused ion beam-scanning electron microscope.
The machine is capable of etching and manipulating materials with nanoscale precision using a focused beam.
It is part of the new £12 million Nanoscale and Microscale Research Centre in the university’s School of Chemistry.
Centre director Andrei Khlobystov said: “This centre will be one of the largest and most advanced clusters of instrumentation for nanoscale and microscale research in the UK.
“We anticipate it will have significant regional, national and global impact.”
Experts at the university have already used similar technology to investigate corrosion of satellite chips, contribute to the development of new coatings and paints, and pioneer a new generation of catalysts.
The university also broke a Guiness World Record in 2010 for producing the world’s smallest periodic table and they still currently holds the title.
The table was written on a single strand of hair and is so small approximately one million of them would fit on a post-it note.